Dinnertime blog

Finally up for air.  All the houseguests: family and near-family, have gone back to the frigid northern temps (oh, dear). And while I am sorry to be alone for the next four weeks, I will survive, with the help of food, drink, and my sewing room. And a walk every day (or almost every day).  

Since the nearest Whole Foods is a half-hour drive, I am not there very often. Publix is around the corner but the less said about that particular store, the better.  Today, I found a sort-of farmer's market and wondered why I ever bought produce elsewhere.  They had tomatillos for .99/lb (which I did not buy, but will, because I make my own salsa verde and it is wonderful), cabbage 3/$1 (if you don't mind

trimming a few questionable leaves), and ridiculously low prices  (all those sweet peppers for $1 and practically free eggplants) on other things. I bought fresh turmeric root, too.  Part of today's loot:

  I will not buy meat or fish except at Whole Foods; one is due to open at the end of this month in West Palm Beach.  But until then, I will eat the WF salmon in my freezer and otherwise, be a veg of some sort.  This is not difficult...at least until I think I will die unless I have a rare steak.  But I had one a few nights ago, so I am fine for a while.

Yesterday, I bought brown rice, dried lentils, and a few cans of chick peas.  This morning I made a fabulous lentil stew (improvised from a NYT recipe: I used Indian spices instead of Italian ones), and tonight, brown rice and kale sauteed in garlic and olive oil. Healthy and I have to say, the best meal I have had at home in weeks.

Still stalled on the kitchen - it's complicated.  The IKEA dishwasher door is too high and caused a problem with the dw not working. It works just fine, pulled out a couple of inches from the counter.

 Suffice it to say I ordered a regular Bosch stainless front to replace the IKEA door, which is too tall and wide, and hope that will help.  I won't go into the details - but argh. I have been waking up at 4:30 a.m worrying about this every morning.

Hopefully, that will be resolved and then the soapstone counter will be where it needs to be and then I can put the toekick in and call the floor people to finish the edges....  Then there is the ceiling and the a/c vent, which prevents the upper cabinet doors from opening in one spot....

Never mind.  All will be sorted out and I am assured it will be fine.  (If I live long enough).

Still haven't found a backsplash I love/can afford, so am sending for samples from a variety of sources.

We shall see.

Saturday, I am driving to Jupiter to teach a one-day class at the South Florida MQG. I'm really happy to be teaching improv piecing to a Modern Quilt Guild - it seems ironic, since "modern" had improv piecing in its original definition, but gee, there are all these patterns for modern quilters. Patterns. Just like we had, more decades ago than we care to admit. Well, I'll admit to 4+ decades since I discovered Quilter's Newsletter (in black and white, mind you) and was hooked.  (also another conversation).

Dinner is over and it is time to clean up the kitchen so I can sit down and read for the rest of the evening. Also need to find some recipes for the cabbage/eggplant/peppers (not necessarily together).

Sorry this was not exactly quilt related (except for the one paragraph), but I am sure you will forgive me.

I did spend all afternoon putzing around in the sewing room, but not ready to post anything.

xo

slow design

There are no shortcuts when you're desigining as you go.  There's ad hoc design - which is throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks (i.e. - yesterday's version). And then there's slow design, which is the thoughtful, "what if?" that keeps you from being wedded to the first version and allows you to try different ways of putting it together (with camera at hand, of course).  Eventually, it will look right.  

Here is what I threw at the wall yesterday.

and here is what I did after I took down all the bits and started again.

More restrul, less clutttered, but still not there.  The difficulty is that I had only three of the original ugly 4-patches.  Two have already been used and I really need to save one for the "before" when I teach my class.  Well, I'll let it percolate.

Today was one of those days. (I seem to have one of those days every day, lately).

1) The saga of Sears and the switching of the refrigerator doors continues.   I won't bore you.  

2)  My wifi extender stopped working - it's no good. So I have to return it.  In the meantime, I went to buy a new one and as I was pullling into a parking spot at the mall, the ditz in the SUV parked next to me opened her driver's side door without looking -- into my right fender.  I had a scratch where the door hit me, but left her with a door that would not close.  OH, well - her fault.  I'm not sure how she drove home while holding her door closed with one hand.

3) Did you ever hear of a supermarket being out of salt?  I don't mean rock salt, I mean table salt. Couldn't find any and when I asked the managers where they hide the salt, they walked me over to aisle 14.  Sure enough, an empty shelf.  What? A salt heist? A run on salt? Hijacked by the Salt Police trying to prevent high blood pressure among all the elderly in Florida?  Life is full of mysteries.

4) A trip to Home Depot to look for battery-operated under ccabinet LED lights.  Cool!!  Got a couple that are velcroed to the cabinet bottoms. One keeps falling so I guess I'll have toscrew it in. They did provide screws, but that can wait till somebody else comes along to do it.  Love the way they look! 

5)  The drop-dead gorgeous tile that I wanted added up to be major sticker shock. So today, i revisited the ugly Home Depot tile and purchased a 12" square that I really don't love but I knew would work. And it is a tiny fraction of the price of the one I love. Sigh...I put a hold on the order and guess I'll keep looking.

This is good for a mtachy-matchy person, but it is so ordinary and boring. OTOH, I will only be here for 3-4 months a year. ANd I have two bathrooms in sad shape that need to be redone. This calls for lottery tickets!

With that, I will put my feet up and read. I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings.