Posts
All Comments
Since the last 'Blitz' chronicle both the squares and the cakes segments have been completed. Delectable scents kept wafting from the oven, but my husband and I have been very good with exercising our willpower - neither of us snuck so much as a single cookie from the trays or a single square from the pans.
My goal: 30 loaves of bread. 
We've also finished planting the back vegetable and berry garden for this season, and stocked up on our vegetable and flower seeds for next year. Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, grapes and red currants range along one side of the fence. Tiny green baby grapes are starting to hang in clusters from the vine. Peas are almost ready to be picked, and beans are also making an appearance. Watermelon, cantaloupe, eggplant, tomato, pepper, cucumber, zucchini and corn are growing and biding their time. Meanwhile, the mint are overflowing their bed as usual, and the asparagus look like tall thin feathers in the wind. 
Okay, so I did say approximately one thousand cookies. Does nine hundred and twenty-nine count? That's about one hundred cookies for every month, and even my husband the 'cookie monster' thinks that that's a lot of cookies.
They didn't look so bad. Bright red or orange, they were small and glossy and harmless looking. Pretty, even.
Until our lilies began to look like Swiss cheese.
It didn't take long for us to figure out that these little insects were far from harmless. In fact, if we let them, they would decimate our entire lily population.
Uh oh. Now, I am not a bug squisher. I avoid spiders because I can't stand to be near them, let alone touch them - but things like ants, and harmless beetles and the like...I'll avoid stepping on them if I can. After all, they're just going on about their own business.
These red lily beetles, though, they need to be dealt with. At first, we went with the heavy-duty bug spray. But toxins and chemicals don't sit well with us, for a myriad of reasons. So my husband took matters into his own hands. He's become the official 'red-beetle squasher.' Whenever he's in the front, he'll take a moment to look for the little monsters. If he sees them, they get ground between his fingers.
It's worked quite well.
The other day, I was at the neighbor's. She pulled up a large weed in her front garden. Underneath was a whole colony of these invaders. They must have wintered under the roots.
Great.
I cross my arms and shake my head in disbelief and exasperation, but he doesn't care. He simply looks up at me as if to say 'what?'
Well the 'what' is that I have just spent time preparing his own special food, complete with fresh organic ingredients, and he won't eat it.
About a year ago, Keani's bloodwork showed elevated ALT levels in his liver. Needless to say, I went on a panic blitz. After all, my little man is only just over a year old. Our vet presented us with a couple of options - things like putting him on pills for the rest of his life which, besides being expensive, would make for an unpleasant start to the day each morning. Keani greatly dislikes being forced to do anything. Admittedly it is sometimes necessary.
Our neighbor, however, suggested we put him on an organic homemade diet. That way we could lower the amount of protein intake and make sure that only the best ingredients were going into his food, in the hopes that it would help his liver recuperate.
So that's what I've been doing. At first it was great. He loved it. Our other dog, Icewind, got to share in the bounty for a time, but Ice is one hundred pounds and eats six cups a day. So he gets his raw treats, but not the whole shebang.
Once that started happening, the 'grass is greener' syndrome set in. Suddenly Icewind's dry dog kibble started looking so much better. It is, admittedly, top grade stuff. But when Keani himself was being fed the same food, he was definitely not so enthusiastic.
Now, though, whatever is in Ice's bowl is better than whatever is in his own, and he will stretch as high as he can, hook his paws over the top of Icewind's food stand, push his neck forward and filch the kibble bits.
Now comes the exasperation part. Worried that Keani wasn't eating enough, I made him a couple of boiled eggs. He loves eggs. This is a fact. So I shelled them, broke them apart, put in a bit of 'healthy powder' (also homemade) and put them in front of him. Instant bliss!
Ten minutes later, he came into the family room where I was and cried.
I have to admit, I am a sucker for his crying. I know, I know. It's bad, and he's spoiled. He really is, and I freely admit it. I am not as ashamed as I thought I would be, either. I've stopped guilt tripping myself over it (I will put the whys and wherefores in another post.)
Anyways, I went into the kitchen. The egg was all gone, oh, yes, except for pieces of egg white. No matter how much I cajoled, he wouldn't touch them. So I put them in Ice's food dish.
That's right. Five minutes later, there Keani was, stretching as high as he would go, to pilfer pieces of egg white that he wouldn't touch when they were in his own bowl.
Aaargh!
Aaah, the weekend. Time to sit back, put my feet up, and relax. NOT.
The weekend does, however, afford me a bit of extra time to play with our food. This last Saturday evening I decided on the following:
The char siu ribs, for example...all that was needed was a jar of char siu (which can be found in most Chinese grocery stores) and a rack of ribs. Slather the sauce onto the ribs, throw them on the barbecue, and there you have it! Delicious.
The salad was likewise easy to make. Dice up half a cucumber, slice up some tomato into chunks, cut up some thin layers of purple onion (not too much!) and crumble in some feta cheese.
The chives were the first herbs to make a reappearance in the garden this year. The cracker dip was the first time I've used them this season. As a lover of chives, I was quite excited about that. This dip pared very nicely with the Parmesan and rosemary flavored Triscuit crackers.
As for the baby potatoes, all they needed was a wash, and then I threw them into a bowl (about 1lb.) In a small bowl I combined garlic salt (to taste), garlic powder, dried oregano, black pepper (to taste) and about a quarter cup of olive oil. I mixed them all up, poured it onto the potatoes, and then used a spoon to roll the potatoes around so that they would each get an even coating. Then I stuck them into a baking dish and into the oven at 400 degrees. Baked them for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Posts
All Comments
