Today: running hot water in the sink! We received our brand new Takagai TK-JR tankless waterheater today, and just after the pancake breakfast, Charley and Phillip installed it. Hot water in the sink! We all washed our hands in celebration. A couple more trips to the hardwear store later, we will also have the washer hooked up and the vent installed. We are waiting on a kit to transform the dryer from a natural gas to LP-run dryer. Our local propane service charges $65 for the kit, but Charley found it for $12 on the internet, so we're waiting on one more shipment.
I baked some cupcakes in the oven today, and cooked lunch. The oven runs hot, and the burners are burning with some yellow/orange flame. We're quite sure that the flame should be all blue, so we have a few small kinks to work out, but for the most part we're up and running with a mostly-finished kitchen. Possibly tomorrow the cabinets will be installed, but that's a big job and may take more than one day.
The pancake breakfast was a hoot. We met a few people, and made sure to visit our friend Pricilla at the general store. She had to work during the breakfast, which was across the street from the store. She had the wood burning stove going in the chilly morning, so it was nice to hang out with her for a bit before ducking in for sausage and bacon and hot cakes. A couple of the masons made an attempt to recruit Charley for the Masons - even gave him a tour of their temple. I think he told them that he's all ready to join once they get the bonfire and the goat sacrifice and the dancing girls ready. They laughed nervously and assured him their organization was not pagan or atheist. I guess that means Charley won't be flipping pancakes next year!!! Besides that minor social gaffe, everyone was quite delightful and we always enjoy meeting the people in our small and scattered community. We shopped the garage sale, and made out with a collapsable clothes drying rack and a pizza pan.
I'm serving as the Team Leader of the Box Office Crew at the Old Settlers Music Festival in a couple of weeks, so I've been spending some time on the computer reading and readying documents for our volunteer training meeting tomorrow. I still need three volunteers - locals? anyone interested? It's a good ole time.
The guys have been working hard all day, and we're going to sit back with a big homey steak dinner tonight. Maybe tomorrow we can all take the day off and catch a movie. The baby has been hiccuping and dancing on my bladder more and more, which is a very distracting sensation. Happy weekend to you!
Showing posts with label kitchen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitchen. Show all posts
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, May 24, 2007
I finally got some pictures of all these plants I've been babbling about. I tried to get some really great pictures of a whole bunch of butterflies nectaring on some bee balm on the side of the road, but I got attacked by damn fire ants while I was standing still, trying to get a good shot. You know they crawl all over you (which you can't feel, because they are so small) and then they emit a chemical signal so that they can bite you all at the same time, don't you? And it really does feel like fire. Like very itchy fire, all over your feet. I know better than to walk into a patch of sandy grass in flats and a skirt and stand still without looking at my feet, but as I have related time and time again, I just don't learn.
I was walking by the side of the road with the camera because Charley brought home a Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar on Wednesday! I had to walk a few blocks into town - which would be Lytton Springs, our town - to the house with the magnolia tree and steal some leaves so it would have something to eat. I took some pictures during my walk, and returned with a few fire ant blisters, too. As it turns out, it never ate the leaves, but - it pooped a whole lot, affixed itself to a stick inside the plastic jug we put it in, and turned brown and shriveled up. Isn't that great??!!That's exactly what they do before they pupate. So we are awaiting a full blown crysalis and eventually and really beautiful butterfly. Hooray!
In the last few days our kitchen has been completely screened in, the screen doors have been hung, painted and affixed with springs and latches, and our kitchen has been put back together. Of course, this didn't happen on its own, Charley and our friend Phillip and even our friend and tenent John have worked their butts off, making individual screen frames for each space in the wall, and cleaning up sawdust and putting all the bowls and cups and odds and ends back in place.. I merely experimented with cooking a roast and veggies in the crockpot to feed them. I have to admit, the screen project came out better than the roast. The roast turned out pretty bland. Tender, but bland. I think I have identified a few things I need to do in the future. For one thing, I need to make more of an attempt to marinate the meat beforehand. I need to cook stuff longer, and also I need to use flavored liquids to cook in, whether it be broth or just worschester sauce spiked water. I'm certainly open to suggestions. I did love how easy it was to put it all in the pot in the morning and come home to a hot, hearty dinner. We accompanied it with some bakery rye bread and butter. It was a pretty good meal, after some bbq sauce and aforementioned worschester sauce was applied to jazz it up some, but I think I can do better.
Our house has become positively homey with the addition of the screened in kitchen. I took some time tonight to marvel again at the amount of space we have to live in now (after spending a year in a cabin 10x20 feet) and how beautiful it looks painted, and furnished.
I walked our lane this evening when I got home - Questionmark butterflies, and more Red Admirals were all over the place. There was a remarkable number of buzzards flying overhead - there must be something dead somewhere, that's the only conclusion one can draw from that. The rose gentian is going crazy, but you can't see the bright pink star blossoms unless you look down into the weedy grasses. When you do, though, they are absolutely carpeting the front acre. I found a black egg, probably a moth or butterfly, hanging from the underside of one of the leaves of the mystery green plant that's all over everywhere right now. I'll have to keep an eye on it, and see what comes out. We're expecting rain tonight, probably, or sometime by this weekend. We're also going to make our sales debut at the local flea market - me with my jewelry and Charley with his junk, and try to go paddling on the Lampassas River on Sunday. I'm sure I'll have some reports to make on the flip side.
Lke I said, I do have pictures. They are pending a charged battery swap and some other computer voo-doo. Soon! For now, I'm just baiting you, so you'll come back and keep reading! Hah! I have strategery on you!
Have a great extra long holiday weekend, everyone!
I was walking by the side of the road with the camera because Charley brought home a Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar on Wednesday! I had to walk a few blocks into town - which would be Lytton Springs, our town - to the house with the magnolia tree and steal some leaves so it would have something to eat. I took some pictures during my walk, and returned with a few fire ant blisters, too. As it turns out, it never ate the leaves, but - it pooped a whole lot, affixed itself to a stick inside the plastic jug we put it in, and turned brown and shriveled up. Isn't that great??!!That's exactly what they do before they pupate. So we are awaiting a full blown crysalis and eventually and really beautiful butterfly. Hooray!
In the last few days our kitchen has been completely screened in, the screen doors have been hung, painted and affixed with springs and latches, and our kitchen has been put back together. Of course, this didn't happen on its own, Charley and our friend Phillip and even our friend and tenent John have worked their butts off, making individual screen frames for each space in the wall, and cleaning up sawdust and putting all the bowls and cups and odds and ends back in place.. I merely experimented with cooking a roast and veggies in the crockpot to feed them. I have to admit, the screen project came out better than the roast. The roast turned out pretty bland. Tender, but bland. I think I have identified a few things I need to do in the future. For one thing, I need to make more of an attempt to marinate the meat beforehand. I need to cook stuff longer, and also I need to use flavored liquids to cook in, whether it be broth or just worschester sauce spiked water. I'm certainly open to suggestions. I did love how easy it was to put it all in the pot in the morning and come home to a hot, hearty dinner. We accompanied it with some bakery rye bread and butter. It was a pretty good meal, after some bbq sauce and aforementioned worschester sauce was applied to jazz it up some, but I think I can do better.
Our house has become positively homey with the addition of the screened in kitchen. I took some time tonight to marvel again at the amount of space we have to live in now (after spending a year in a cabin 10x20 feet) and how beautiful it looks painted, and furnished.
I walked our lane this evening when I got home - Questionmark butterflies, and more Red Admirals were all over the place. There was a remarkable number of buzzards flying overhead - there must be something dead somewhere, that's the only conclusion one can draw from that. The rose gentian is going crazy, but you can't see the bright pink star blossoms unless you look down into the weedy grasses. When you do, though, they are absolutely carpeting the front acre. I found a black egg, probably a moth or butterfly, hanging from the underside of one of the leaves of the mystery green plant that's all over everywhere right now. I'll have to keep an eye on it, and see what comes out. We're expecting rain tonight, probably, or sometime by this weekend. We're also going to make our sales debut at the local flea market - me with my jewelry and Charley with his junk, and try to go paddling on the Lampassas River on Sunday. I'm sure I'll have some reports to make on the flip side.
Lke I said, I do have pictures. They are pending a charged battery swap and some other computer voo-doo. Soon! For now, I'm just baiting you, so you'll come back and keep reading! Hah! I have strategery on you!
Have a great extra long holiday weekend, everyone!
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