Missed days...

Darn it!  I've spent an entire week trying to write a post and, in the process, lost that week to my online rememberer.  SIGH.

I had a full day today, so I think I will start there.

Wait, I'm going to go back to yesterday.  Or the wee hours of this morning.  I did some midnight gardening (that was really at 1:00 AM).  I tackled the weeping cherry, which is inexorably taking over my yard!  I trimmed it up, worked on its width a bit, and weeded beneath it.  The latter is a task I have not done for two years, at least.  Probably three.


I watered, which turned out to be sort of a personal joke between God and I, because just a few hours later, we had one of those torrential downpours!  However, that was good, because I cannot soak my azaleas the way that God can.  And, being new bushes, I have been a bit lackadaisical about keeping them well-watered until they are established.  I noted this afternoon that the leaves were much, much perkier after the downpour.

I watered the raised beds, especially my non-producing cucumbers.  Well, my six plants have grown two small cucumbers and these three duds.  SIGH.  Last year I had such a bumper crop even though the plants were crammed into that tiny pot.  Now, spread out, they are totally unhappy.  SIGH.  SIGH.  SIGH.

A few days ago, I picked my very first summer squash!!!!  Another one is growing, but all the rest of the blossoms have been male ones, so I am a tad worried that FIVE squash plants will only produce two fruit for me.  That is a terrible ratio!  However, last summer, all I did was kill squash plants, so I am already ahead at this point.  I did, three weeks ago, plant the last of my summer squash seeds.  I have five more plants growing.  They have blossom buds, but they are only about twelve inches tall, so I am not sure I left myself enough time for the plants to mature.  Since I cannot use the seeds again next year, it didn't cost me anything to try and grow them.

Part of my midnight gardening was picking up the fallen tomatoes and adding them to my new stash. Now, this is important because ...

... this was my stash just a few days ago.   Well, August 15th.  Somehow, I already had enough for another half batch of the tomato sauce after, seemingly, just having made the first one.

I did all my prep first and took a photo (and a rest) before starting.  Only, in this photo you can see that I forgot to get out the basil paste.  I had to hastily grab it from the refrigerator when it came to that point in the recipe.  The first six servings, I saved individually, but these six servings, I saved in batches of two in pint mason jars.

The key to that photo above is that I already have double the tomatoes since the rain storm dropped a whole lot more of them.  However, I forgot to take a photo to show you the new ones just a day later  and if I get up and take one now, I'll probably get distracted and not finish this point.

I AM FINISHING THIS POST!

So, back to last night's gardening that was after a week ago's cooking of tomato sauce.  One of the things that I SWORE I was going to do, when I was watering, is to put up some of the herbs I am growing.  That meant that, today, I would take down the German dill and cilantro that is dry, strip those leaves, and get them into jars, and then harvest, bundle, and hang the next set of herbs.

This is my German dill.  I really, really, really like this stuff, so I am looking forward to cooking with it even dried.  The jar smells so bloody good!!  Where is the cilantro?  Well, let me first say that I forgot to take a photo of the first herb I dried this summer:  rosemary.  I ended up taking bags of it to most of my doctors since I have two rosemary pots and at least one of them will winter.  I am quite good at wintering Rosemary, but I have learned that the bushes only like being in pots for so many years before wanting ground and the ground in Indiana will not keep rosemary alive during the winter.  I also had made rosemary butter in the spring, which is why I dried some.  I was planning on keeping it, but then thought about how much care I get from my medical team ... and my own availability of rosemary.  I do hope to dry some for my friends when I do a harvest before bringing the pots inside to winter.

So, back to the cilantro.  Well, when I took it down, it didn't smell.  At all.  I was really surprised.  Then, I tasted it.  There was basically no taste.  I mean, I am actually not a cilantro fan, so I am rather sensitive to its taste.  This had none.  I do not know if there is something special you have to do with cilantro to dry it or if what I grew was only good fresh.  But I ended up tossing the three bundles that I had dried.  SIGH.

So, today, I did get the German dill in a jar and I got three bundles of sage, four of thyme, and three of oregano harvested, bundled, and hung.  Of course, I fainted three times whilst hanging them.  [I sure do need me a helper for things that need doing but are a sure-fire syncope episode.]

The oregano is especially exciting to me because last year I didn't bother growing it.  That is because the first two years of herb growing, the oregano I bought grew along the ground and was a bear to harvest and then strip after it dried. To me, the yield wasn't worth the hassle.  This is a different type and I am FRUSTRATED that I do not remember where I bought it.  I am assuming it was from Menard's, because Lowe's is where I got the frustrating type.  However, you know where assumptions get you.  In any case, I dearly wish that I had harvested it earlier so that I could get more from the single plant I bought.  I was thinking that oregano would be good to also freeze in oil.

Skipping back to last night, before the gardening, I held a surgery clinic for Amos' babies.  He was whimpering and whining the entire time I worked on three of his babies.  Sadly, all three were damaged again before the evening had grown very long.  However, I had forgotten just how much Amos ADORES his Elf Baby.  This was his post-surgery-clinic nap with Elf Baby, who, incidentally, also went upstairs with us to bed.

Wait.
Uhm.
Maybe surgery clinic was the night before.

ARGH!  THAT is why I hate missing writing about my days, even if my entries disappoint me as a writer most days now.

Well, sometime in the past few days, I fried my first fried food.  I picked zucchini.  I wanted to use flour, milk, eggs, and breadcrumbs, as I had seen all four used in cooking videos, but I couldn't find the order.  I only found the flour-egg-breadcrumb order, so I went with that.  However, as you might guess, I also went with panko breadcrumbs.

These are actually my second batch a day later, because I forgot to document my official first fried food, but they look the same.  I was rather disappointed in how I found them to taste and was weighing switching to regular breadcrumbs in the second attempt (I had two zucchinis), but decided to stay the course.

I have been thinking muchly and deeply on the matter.  Is it that the taste is just not wowing me because I do not, as a rule, eat fried foods?  I rarely have them when going out and rarely go out now that I am on a fixed income.   Or is it that I did not properly season either the flour or the breadcrumbs??  I honestly do not know.

The zucchini did not taste bad.  It actually melted in my mouth (the inside part) and the outside was impressively crunchy.  It just didn't wow me.

Last Friday, I think (because of how many I have left), I made another batch of my beloved baked oatmeal.  This is key because this is the second time that I got to make them all at once (or, darn it, was it the third?).  I think it was the second because the first time I was so excited that I messed up counting on the oatmeal, I used the wrong milk, and I forgot the blueberries.  The end result was pretty awful, but I ate all 18 of them anyway because I LOVE baked oatmeal.

They were really, really, really dense.
Brick dense.
Baked hockey pucks.

These turned out light and soft and AMAZING.  I had my seventh one (I think) this morning and for the seventh day in a row, I have marveled at how tasty they are.  I've been eating them for months and months and months and their AWESOMENESS never grows old.  Of course, it is especially notable after consuming the previous batch.

Back to today.  I wanted to eat my summer squash since it had already been in the refrigerator for a few days, so I planned a special meal.  That meant thawing out my second-to-last steak and digging for carrots.  I actually found one of respectable length!  [My dear friend Mary thinks there are two others that are also respectable.]  Now, the problem is that I STINK at being a carrot murderer, so I did not thin these.

These are the ones that I harvested several days ago, so I had a very strong lesson on the need to thin driven home, but I still did not manage to thin my second crop of carrots until last night.  I doubt that I was too late on the thinning, but I am now doubting that I will get any carrots from the second batch.  We are having a whole lot of unseasonable weather and I suspect I will not have the longer growing season that I was counting on when I planted the rest of the seeds.

Next year, I think I will plant cucumber plants all along the fence of the original bed and then carrots all along in front of them because I LOVE carrots.

Here is my meal all prepped.  I have decided that, wherever possible, I need to cook by prepping first because it affords me the opportunity to rest a bit before I start cooking.  That cuts the length of the cooking process into more manageable segments for me.  And standing is one of the most difficult things for me to do.  [If there is a way to cook in my kitchen whilst sitting, I haven't found it yet.]

The steak is seasoned and oiled (I learned that if I oil the steak instead of the pan, I get far, far less smoke).  I sliced and then made up the marinade for the summer squash.  It is my most favorite way of cooking summer squash, grilled with the butter/stone ground mustard/ginger paste marinade.  Mmmmm!  The carrots are drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with smoked sea salt, peppercorn medley, sage, and thyme.

I wanted to use one of my last steaks (steak is not going to be in my austere budget) because this is the first time I get to eat vegetables that I have grown.  I really am disappointed that I failed at thinning carrots and mostly failed at my summer squash because I ADORE both of those.  And, based on tonight's meal, picking veggies just before (or there abouts) before cooking them makes them BLOODY FANTASTIC.

Everything turned out VERY tasty.

Yes, I ate by candlelight again!


I was so very excited about both meeting my goal (the herbs) and, for the very FIRST time, cooking so that all of my dishes were ready at the same time that I decided to go for broke in the energy department and test my working theory on just why it is that I haven't been all that successful with my fires out in my haven.

Since I am the Fire Queen when it comes to laying them indoors, my poor performance out of doors has bothered me.  I decided it was because I couldn't use my Tried-And-True method without either the andirons I have inside or a rack.  I actually found a rack that would fit my fire pit, but it is $29.95, so I have put off buying it.  Then, I wondered if I could use some of my old bricks as makeshift andirons (okay, not andirons but the same function as far as I am concerned).

I used four bricks to create two long supports for my logs.  In the middle, I made my kindling pile that is comprised of paper, paperboard, bark bits, a fire starter, and some bits of wood (this summer, I've been using paint sticks since I have a substantial collection of them).  I put my single piece of kindling wood (Firewood Man makes these skinny, bare pieces of wood for me) just above the fire starter so it can light and then light the rest of my wood.  I then placed the six logs, two by two by two, in alternating directions, three stacks high.  I lit the kindling and VOILÁ!  I had my usual ROARING fire in just about two minutes.

THE FIRE QUEEN IS BACK!

I had put six more logs in my log carrier to use to add to my fire as it got going.  The fire was so well done that I was able to watch a movie (I'll give you one guess which one) and two episodes of "The Great British Bake Off."  I still had one log about half left, but I needed to get working on going to bed (which I am not making much progress since I am writing this), so I put on the screen cover and went inside.

Then, I went back outside to take a soothing video to post for my Facebook Peeps (I've not been able to figure out how to post my videos on here).  As I was taking the video, the crickets were chirping and a passing train began to whistle.  The fire was gently crackling.  And the cool breeze was blowing through my hair.  I could have stayed out there until the final ember cooled my have is so darned PEACEFUL.

I know that it is going to take me a long, long, long time to pay myself back for the overages of that space, but it absolutely was worth it.  And, personally, I think that God gave me a summer half filled with cool days because He knew I'd go nuts waiting an entire summer to use the space again!  Okay, perhaps not really, but I have been MIGHTILY blessed.

So, here I am, with a raging headache, as is par for the course these days as I try to get used to my increased dose of bacolfen.  That drug is a miracle worker with regard to making my want-to-kill-myself pain more manageable.  So, I think that the adjustment of each dose increase has been worth it.  But it is hard to remember that when I am dealing with the constant dizziness and the raging headaches.

I am also putting off sleeping, as I have for several days now, because I am afraid.  I went for a while without remembering my dreams.  It was heavenly in the relief and in the fact that I truly believe it was, in part, because some of my FB peeps were praying about my dreams.  But then I woke up screaming again and it was the absolute worst dream that I have ever had.  And I don't want to have it again.

I am afraid to have it again.
SIGH.