Tonight's Dinner from the Garden

I love summer.  Look what I found outside when I came home from work:

Now wouldn't that inspire anyone to cook?  So here's what I made for dinner.  First, I made a quick pesto with the basil, some garlic, olive oil, and toasted pine nuts.  (What, doesn't everyone have pine nuts on hands????)

Then I cut the squash into thick strips, around the same size as the penne pasta I was cooking.  Into the pan they went with a little olive oil:

After they cooked for a bit, I tossed in the cherry and grape tomatoes.

I cooked that for a little bit until the skins on the tomatoes started to wrinkle.  Then in went the cooked penne pasta and the pesto:

And voila!  Dinner!

It was really quite good and didn't take long at all.  I love dinner right out of the garden!

Canton Cougar Sightings

So most locals folks have heard the news of cougar sightings in the Canton area.  The Repository has been covering the sightings, but today they posted this article that really cracked me up:
http://www.cantonrep.com/carousel/x311101608/Is-this-the-cougar-thats-been-prowling-Stark

So, I was inspired to keep my camera at the ready to snap a picture if the mystery cat happens to end up in our backyard.  After all, it was just last year when we had the coyote swing by for a visit.

Wouldn't you know it?  I was making dinner and guess what I saw in my back yard????  Oh, my goodness!  What IS it????

Oh, don't worry...

It's just a sweet little bunny.  (Well, maybe not so little!)  I'll keep you all posted.  Who knows who will make an appearance on Deerfield Lane!

Garden Fajitas!

What do you do when you have a bunch of miscellaneous veggies fresh from the garden?  I usually make fajitas!

I had a handful of fingerling potatoes and a few small squash, as well as a really ripe tomato from the farmer's market.  Round it out with an onion, some rice and condiments... and it's dinner!

Here are the sliced potatoes and onions, a little S&P:

Then I stir fried the sliced zucchini and yellow squash with a little Penzey's adobo seasoning.

Assembly time!  There's a layer of rice, the potato / onion mixture, squash, tomato, vegan sour cream and guacamole.

I think the best part was the potato layer...  And the squash layer...  And the tomato...  It was really yummy!

Pizza Stone

We bought a pizza stone from one of Richard's coworkers who was selling Pampered Chef a couple years ago and for some reason I stuck it in a dark corner of the pantry and never used it.  I don't know why I thought about it today, but I felt like using it.  Total success!

I used the pizza dough recipe that only takes a few minutes to make, added some Mids pizza sauce, and asparagus that I grilled for a few minutes:

I topped it with Daiya cheese and prest-o, change-o:  Vegan Pizza!

The pizza stone worked out nicely... I don't think I'll go back to a regular pizza pan.

Meet Spot and Speckle

Meet Spot

Our newest resident of our backyard on Deerfield Lane is Spot.  She's been hanging out for the past 24 hours and we've noticed that she has a large spot on her side.  Is it just a mark?  Was she shot?  We don't know.  She seems to be getting around okay, but we think it's strange that she's hanging around so much.

Pretty Decent Vegan Pizza

I love pizza.  I know Richard *really* loves pizza, but I'm pretty fond of it, too!  I recently discovered that Tofutti makes are good frozen vegan pizza using Daiya cheese, but I can only get it from Mustard Seed, which is a bit far to drive for pizza.

Of course I've made my own pizza using the Pillsbury dough, but I really don't like that "Pillsbury" flavor.  I've avoided making my own dough because I thought it would take a long time.  Then I found this recipe for an instant dough that is pretty good.  It took all of five minutes to make the dough and you don't even have to let it rise.  I made the dough and used Mids pizza sauce and Daiya cheese.  Next time I'll add toppings now that I know that the dough is yummy.  (Most likely zucchini considering how prolific it tends to be in my garden!)

A couple new thingies

After getting our deck redone a couple years ago we've struggled finding just the right furniture.  At first we got some powder-coated metal furniture from Target, which was supposed to be rust-proof, but it collected water in the legs and when you moved the furniture around the rusty water would spill out and stain the deck.  A couple years ago I ran into a couple from Holmes Crafted Furniture selling at the Wayne County Fair and they seemed so nice.  Their furniture was just what I was looking for so about a month ago I placed an order with them.

The furniture comes in a variety of colors and is made from recycled milk jugs.  They can stay out year-round, which is a bonus because we have absolutely nowhere to store it.  We went with the brown color to basically blend in with the rest of the deck.

Here are the cafe-style chairs and tall table:

This is the glider and a side table.  The glider has a center piece that folds down with two cup-holders.

Here's a view from sitting in the glider.  If you face this direction the hill in the back yard is very nice and private.  Lots of critters pass through while you're sitting.

Well, the view from chairs facing the front of the house isn't as peaceful, especially since our oak tree is long gone.  Eventually we'll plant another tree so we can get some of our privacy back (in say, 20 years!).

One other purchase to mention... I have the WORST luck with pepper grinders.  I've gone through about 3 in the past couple of years, but I have to admit fault by continuing to purchase the same model over and over again.  The one I kept breaking matches the sea salt grinder on the left.  It has a lot of movable plastic parts as part of the grinding mechanism, which would easily jam on the pepper corns, breaking off plastic pieces.  The salt seems to work fine, thought.

So, on the right is my newest grinder and I have to say I absolutely love it!  It's made from Oxo, which makes a lot of other kitchen gadgets I really like. On the top you can control the size of the grind, which is a feature I especially like.  I picked mine up at Crate and Barrel, but you can also get it from Amazon.

OXO Good Grips Pepper Grinder

Scout vs. the Kitty Bank

Scout has a habit of sitting on Richard's night stand and knocking off coins to the floor, one by one.  So when I found this kitty bank I had to get it for Richard as part of his 40 gifts for his 40th birthday.  Here is a video of Richard demonstrating the bank, of course using all of the coins out of my purse.  So I guess Richard also got another few bucks out of the deal!

The bank is available at Amazon: Itazura Stealing Coin Cat Piggy Bank - White Kitty and also at Think Geek.

Water Woes

Yesterday's sudden downpour wreaked havoc on our neighborhood's streets.  We had a few potholes before, but now we've got some serious craters:

What Do You Do When Your Husband Turns 40?

I guess if you're me, you try to kill him with extreme yard work.  Poor Richard...  I really gave us both a workout today with landscaping the back of the house.  

Earlier this week I took advantage of a sale at Dayton's Garden Center.  If you buy more than 10 azaleas, they were half off ($3.99 each!).  So I picked up 12 of them, intending on landscaping the back of the house since it is so dull.  Unfortunately, we needed to pull up A LOT of sod to make this happen.  Here are the before and after photos...

Along the back of the house we basically had grass, weeds, and a few hostas around the window wells.  

We had very little color going on:

Since the plants are pretty small right now, they haven't made much of a difference, but they'll get bigger.  I moved a butterfly bush from the front of the house to under the kitchen window.

Next on the project list... Moving the pile of dirt and shavings from the ground up oak tree stump around the house.  The shavings will be good around the azaleas and blueberries, which will like the additional acidic mulch.

Well, it's good to know that we were able to get as much done as we did on such a nice (but a little too sunny) day.  I'm pretty sure Richard is happy to go back to work tomorrow and leave the yard behind!

Green Paper Kitty Shenanigans

What happens when you combine about 80 sheets of green tissue paper, a table fan, and two frisky kitties?  Oh, about 24 hours of romping, rolling, and stalking!  Here's just a sampling of the kitty shenanigans, starring Scout and Monkey.

One Way to Celebrate a 40th Birthday

Give him 40 gifts!

Richard got his geek on today as he opened a variety of gifts, but I think he liked the Green Lantern ones the best!

We stopped at Mom and Dad's after dinner and Richard was greeted by a bunch of numbered parcels:

Richard will need to take his vitamins to get through opening all those gifts!

Did you know that you could get a Starship Enterprise Pizza Cutter?  Richard didn't either!

Awww.... It's a plush Hal Jordan!

And, uh, a bobblehead Hal Jordan?

And a pop-up book with Hal Jordan?

And another Hal Jordan t-shirt????

Okay, that's just a bunch of green tissue paper to bring home to the kitties to play in later!

We ended with a large blank canvas.  That's something for Richard to work on over the next 40 years!

It was a fun way to end a fun day.  And tomorrow is his party... So more pictures to come!

DC Comics-Green Lantern Head Knocker 1 (from S2)
Funko Green Lantern Plushies
STAR TREK USS ENTERPRISE PIZZA CUTTER
DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book

Public Enemy Number One

Every year our neighbor complains about the groundhog living between our yards.  Last year a groundhog was responsible for eating the bottoms off of half of my tomatoes and the year before I witnessed a groundhog finishing off the last of my near-harvest Brussels sprouts (which take a VERY long time to grow).  Groundhogs are not welcome in my yard.  This one has a Havahart trap with his name written all over it.

A sure time it's really Spring...

It's asparagus time!

 I've got about 10 spears poking through the earth.  Mmmnn....  I should have a nice handful this weekend!