Sunset Cat

Quick update on the Independence goals:

Plant something:  nada but we did clean out the garage and I have identified several sets of bins to make into homemade earthboxes (PDF here)
Harvest something:  ate some Santa Rosa plums;  ate some plums from a coworker off her Santa Rosa plum tree
Preserve something:  nada, not enough to harvest
Plan/Manage:  does [...]

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We had a wonderful weekend in San Francisco — clear warm sunny days, cool nights, great dinners out, and Dave got to swim in the San Francisco Bay!
The tri was Sunday, we drove down Friday afternoon and arrived a little before 9pm at the Cow Hollow Motor Inn (cheap large clean rooms very close to [...]

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I’ve cleaning up some of the documents on my laptop and found the list of recipes for our housewarming party. We kept to a Spanish theme, serving some Spanish red and white wines, several types of cheese, bread, olives etc, as well as a selection of warm tapas. My only main non-theme food [...]

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I’ve contacted a company who makes old-fashioned wood screens about making screens for our windows, as well as a company who restores old windows as well as custom building windows in the same style. The window person is coming out this Monday to do an estimate.
We also have an electrician coming out Monday as [...]

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Fresh mozzarella
Originally uploaded by stephannie_t.
CHEESE! I did find something new in Kingsolver’s book. I had no idea you can make cheese at home.
I’ve bought and received the kit she recommended, and just tried it.
It really was tremendously easy — and it tastes delicious.
We went to the Torrance farmer’s market today.
I bought [...]

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Regarding coffee: for the longest time we’ve simply used a french press for our coffee. Easy, fast, really tasty if you want a thick strong brew.
It required (in my mind) the purchase of a good quality grinder — I bought a Gaggia MDF off Amazon, and, between the sale they were running on [...]

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Last night I made up a batch of basic risotto. I wanted enough to have leftovers for a couple lunches this week (never as lusciously creamy as when made fresh but very tasty).
1 large onion cut into small pieces
Enough butter (unsalted organic) or olive oil to saute the onion and the rice
6 cups chicken [...]

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I’ve modified a scone recipe that I found on Allrecipes.com (well, I basically used the ratio of dry to wet ingredients as a starting point). I’ve done various permutations of this, using milk or buttermilk instead of the sour cream, various dried fruits instead of nuts, adding in fresh lemon juice for lemon poppy [...]

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The Scuba Show was good — Dave and I whipped through it quickly but I did get to see some old friends from the LA County Advanced Diver Program. I also confused the hell out of a lot of people who’d been speakers from our class last year — “Hi! you spoke to [...]

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Gee, when I don’t work, I post nearly every day. Sometimes multiple times in a day. And when I do work? no postings!
Three different vet clinics in five days. Sounds like one of those bad ‘it’s Tuesday so this must be France’ European bus tours. It does make the work [...]

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