I smiled as Rowdy made his way over to the soup pot a few times to sample this one while it was cooking on the stove. The warm aromas of the butternut squash, cumin, ginger, onion and spices filled the house tantalizing our noses and priming our taste buds. Simple and easy to make, this is by far one of my favorite homemade soups. Toss in a few carrots, drizzle in a bit of coconut milk and this is just very nice and a little different.
I had looked at 4 or 5 recipes before figuring out what I was going to do. Options are varied and include going with a more “nutty” flavor or more on the “Indian” side — using cream instead of coconut milk, nutmeg and other spices. I made this without following any particular recipe but rather just from a sense of what I wanted to taste, based on what I was reading. I highly recommend this combination!
Our friend Robbie Saslow, made a soup once, that tasted somewhat like this and my eyes nearly rolled back in my head and stuck at that time. I’m not certain if Robbie uses this same combination, but he very well may. I’ll have to check with him on this.
Homemade Yogurt!
Drying herbs and veggies is surely handy and useful. Rowdy has found another very wonderful, tasty, and healthy snack to make with the new Excalibur dehydrator that we now have. Yogurt! We’ve been eating homemade yogurt, practically every day! SO good and so good for you too!
There’s something quite wonderful about a nice garden walkway. Using more of the reclaimed bricks from the yard, Rowdy constructed a new garden pathway. Raised above the graveled dirt base, the brick path adds character and function to the garden’s walkway.
For ramming into other canine friends, your human friends (be sure to leave nice bruises on their legs), for scooping up different things and for holding onto your favorite dog toy. In this case, your stuffed turtle.
“Jack-o-lantern, Jack-o-lantern,
You are such a funny sight.
As you sit there by the window,
Looking out into the night.
You were once a sturdy pumpkin,
growing on a curly vine.
Now you are a Jack-o-lantern,
See your night lights shine.”
Spooky, frightful schemes we brew – hair raising and sweet too!
Schemes are definitely afoot, here on Berrycreek Ct. We’ll spook those kiddies and town’s folk alike! Muwhaaaa haaaa!!
The night before last, we happily tried out one-half of the hubbard squash we brought in for cooking. See my last post. Last night, Rowdy found another recipe to use the squash in. Cooking the squash and chicken separately, and then adding the squash to Ms. Cubbison’s cornbread stuffing mix already prepared with onion and celery, the ingredients were combined in the casserole dish. Stir in some cream of mushroom soup, with an added dash of fresh thyme and oregano and bake. This is some very nice, comfort food! Warms a belly up very nicely!
When it was growing, it grew vines across the veggie garden, up the wall of the house, and was coming into the bathroom window when we redirected it. From that crazy overgrown plant, to larger than basketball sized squash… what the heck were we gonna do with these things?!
Last night, Rowdy took the smallest one, and we tried it out. Baked in the oven with butter and brown sugar, served on the side of our yummy organic beef stew… SO good!!!
Both the stew and the squash was cooked in our super-wonderful casserole dish. See it here.
Rowdy and I took off quickly after he got home from work yesterday. Out in the desert-y desert and on base property, we pulled off the road with two other vehicles. Very quickly the MP’s showed up with very large guns and very kindly directed us off of the base to an acceptable viewing area, less than a mile from that position. Whose gonna argue, right? So, off we all went where we found the right spot and we quickly parked.
This time, we had enough time to get out, take in the scene, and choose our vantage point. This gathering of folks seemed to include all kinds of folks. There was the loner guy, with a floppy hat, smoking his pipe. The family with kids sitting in the back of their pick up truck, who met some other friends out there and invited them “on up” into the back of the truck. There were the kids wearing “official” air force pilot outfits, and the young women standing on top of their SUV. And there was a very thoughty guy, who had tuned his radio in to the shuttle’s frequency and was broadcasting it out for us to all listen to. A rag-tag type of group we all were.
Rowdy and I wandered out away from the cars and all the chatter, just a few yards. Well, I would say that this served us right for not staying closer in, we both got our feet stung by these really nasty ants. I kept saying, “What dumb-ass ants! They are the ones who climbed up onto our feet and into our shoes! Why are they biting us?” My foot ached badly for hours, all the way up ’til bedtime!
Keeping an eye out in the sky, and on the ground, Rowdy spotted a tarantula burrow too! So, we waited about 10 minutes or so and then the double sonic boom slammed into us and the ground. We’ve heard them before, but this time it was LOUD and just shook the ground. Rowdy jumped. I immediately said to myself, “Oh shit! And looked down, expecting a swarm of nasty ants to cover our feet.” One person cried out a few moments later, “There it is! It’s white!” and pointed north. We were looking south. So we figured out that they don’t always come in from the same direction. Last time we did this, they came in from the south – we were sure of it! I looked down at the ground again. No ants and no furry spiders.
We scanned the sky back and forth and Rowdy picked it up first. A spec of white reflected sun, that seemed to disappear for a moment, as Discovery turned in toward the runway. Then it reappeared and we were able to follow the spec until is disappeared behind the desert brush and parked cars. There was lots of pointing, cheering, horn honking and gawking through orange-tinted binoculars.
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- In larger format, you can actually see something that looks like the shuttle
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- NASTY ant
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- That’s really it!
Rowdy and I headed back to Buster the Jeep, and I picked up a discarded soda can right by the pick-up truck filled with honest-to-goodness families.
“Thank you,” said one of the moms.
“You’re welcome,” I muttered under my breath.
From the other side of the Jeep I heard a frustrated, “Ow!” I walked around to Buster’s passenger side and Rowdy was busy inspecting his other foot, which had just been attacked by one of the nasty ants. He had both feet stung now!
In spite of our bites, our spirits were high and we decided to drive up to Littlerock and Charley Brown’s Market. We hadn’t had our favorite habenero, garlic stuffed green olives in quite some time. Unfortunately, they were out, but we did leave with two bags of good stuff anyway and headed home to the homemade beef stew (and canine family members) that waited for us.
See the pics above. The spec-that-is-the-shuttle, looks larger when viewed at the photos original size. These images are a bit compressed for web viewing.
To see the official, up close pics, visit NASA’s website.
“Olive, No!” Translate to: “Please stop eating the insoles of our shoes, please stop chewing the furniture, please stop harassing Bell, please leave the toilet brush alone, please leave the toilet paper ON the roll, please put those canine fangs and dew claws back in your mouth, please don’t chew on the neighbors (take a breath), please grow up, wait! don’t!”
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- 7 Weeks
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- Nearly 5 Months
As far as green thumbs go, you’d think Rowdy had more than “Montana Ranch” in his blood. A huge batch of peppers came in, of different varieties; swiss-chard and tomato plants have completely come back after being cut to the quick; We’ve reclaimed the garden from the gigantor hubard squash; and after we spoke very gently to what was a literally a leafless twig of a plant, our front-yard bird of paradise produced it’s first blossoms.
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- Swiss-chard, basil and parsley
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- Bird of Paradise blossoms!
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- Cleaned up, and new brick project from bricks reclaimed from the poolside
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- Almost as tall as the originals!
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- Peppers! And more growing!
