Every cloud has a silver lining...

...even when said cloud produces a massive thunder, lightning, and wind storm that forces you to unplug the computer and not write up the blogpost you had already downloaded pictures for...

Hmnf. Anyway, Andrew took the picture above - we were driving back from Willow's camp and saw this from an intersection - I was driving and I quickly pulled my camera out of my pocket and started yelling at Andrew to take the picture. It's a wonder the man doesn't have me committed.

Willow's daycamp was having an after-hours activity, and when we went to pick her up we found her roasting marshmallows all by herself. A first for her, I think. We do it frequently over the barbeque, but usually it is Andrew roasting them and handing them to her.



And, as you can see - sometimes it takes some time to learn the intricacies of nicely browned versus charred:



Her counsellor saved the day by smooshing the overdone marshmallow between some graham crackers and hershey bar:



Yum!

(And you know what - chalk that up to one more thing I have never done - eaten a smore!)

Peach Rhubarb Jam

Another small step toward domesticity... I made jam!

I've helped my Mom make jam many times - I distinctly remember being put to work as a child and teenager, and even as recently as two summers ago I helped Mom make jam and other preserves (my Mom makes the best blackberry jam in the world!), but I never tried to make any of my own. And, in the interest of full disclosure, this is freezer jam and nothing I did involved boiling jars or anything like that.

Baby steps, people.

I had picked a bunch of rhubarb at my in-laws' place this morning, and even though rhubarb is getting a bit out of season, I thought if I chopped it up finely enough it would be fine. I know most people tend to pair rhubarb and strawberries together, but I really don't care for that combination. After Mom's blackberry jam, my next favourite preserves is peach jam, so I decided to go for a peach/rhubarb collaboration.

In the end I used 5 peaches and 4 long stalks of rhubarb - I probably should have used a bit more, but I was sort of eye-balling the 4 cups of crushed fruit the Ball Freezer Jam Pectin package called for. This is what I did:

Chopped up the rhubarb. I looked for the reddest stalks I could find for colour, but my inlaws' variety is more green than red.



Attempt to blanch the peaches. I was an abysmal failure at this. I put them in boiling water for a minute then put them in cold water, and the skin wouldn't budge. Tried doing it again, and all I succeeded in doing was cook my peaches a bit. Also, I learned very quickly these were not clingfree peaches. Since I couldn't take off the skin, I sliced up the sections of peach quite thinly to avoid big chunks of skin in the jam.



Mix everything together in a pan and mash it with the potato masher. The recipe called for crushed fruit, but neither the peaches I bought nor the rhubarb are very juicy on their own. The recipe also said you could cook the peaches for a bit to make a thicker jam, so that is what I did - and mashed the softer, cooked stuff afterward.



Add in the 1.5 cups of sugar. Probably could have done with less given the fact I was a little short on the fruit mixture, but I don't mind sweet jam. Mix in the sugar.



Then mix in the pectin, stir for 3 more minutes, and then pour into the 5 - eight ounce containers. Um, yeah... I was making dinner at the same time as doing this and completely spaced taking pictures of those steps. Let them sit in the containers with the lids tight for 30 minutes, then put 4 containers in the freezer and keep one for immediate use in the refrigerator.

Isn't it pretty?



After letting it sit in the refrigerator through dinner, clean up, and talking to Mom on the phone, I toasted a piece of bread and slathered on some jam...



I love the fact it still has quite a bit of chunks of fruit for texture:



And a close up of the jam:



So, it looks pretty - but how did it taste? The chief jam-taster in the house gave it a thumbs up!



It really is good - I was surprised! After putting it in the refrigerator I was having second thoughts about the rhubarb and how it was not cooked very much - the peaches broke down faster than the rhubarb - but the worries were for nothing. The jam is sweet, tasty, and the chunks of fruit are so nice. Willow ate most of my toast and declared she wanted it on her toast for breakfast in the morning.

I think I will try to make freezer jam again after all my containers are cleaned out (these containers are specifically for freezer jam - they are made by Bernardin and I bought them in Canada a few years ago). What combination will I make next? I'm thinking of something with plums...

Wot?! Me buy yarn? Never...

Look what showed up on my doorstep this afternoon!



I wasn't intending to buy yarn this week, but then I was surfing Etsy on saw this very pretty yarn on sale:



Then I traipsed over to the Beyond Basic Knits' website and saw that a colorway I had coveted for a long time, Moorea, was being discontinued amd was on sale, so I had to grab one of these, too:



Now I just need to finish the socks (and Tara's armwarmers!) I have on the needles so I can get started on one of these lovelies! Does anyone have any pattern suggestions for them?

Onto the garden. Have you ever seen a cucumber dumpier than this one?



How about this one?



I'm not sure what is going one here. They are nice and straight until they are about the size the size of gherkins, and then they get round. Maybe it was a seed mix-up because this definitely not what the cucumber on the seed package looked like.

My Cheddar spaghetti squash is doing well. I was mentioning to one of my co-workers that I didn't know how to tell when it is ripe - it's a squash with a hard exterior. She said I should be able to tell with the colour - and it is about same colour now as it was when I bought it, so I might pick it this weekend.



And lastly, my Rose of Sharon:



Enjoy it while it lasts - it is getting drastically cut back after it finishes blooming.

Camp Carnival

Nothing like watching your kid run around apeshit for two hours.

I'm watching the sky and waiting for flashes of lightning, but nothing happened. So tired... but I am not finished the book.

(What book? I only have two chapters left of Laurell K. Hamilton's Skin Trade. Not a bad book, but I'm getting a bit tired of the "So what?! I'm a girl!" comments.)

Jo After Exercise

Yeah.. it's not pretty. I had a big need to blow off steam today, so I went full-tilt for 40 minutes, and after a while noticed that the bottoms of my feet - particularly the balls of my feet (I really hope that is the right word because that sounds awfully dirty), were quite numb. My shoes are relatively new - bought them in the Spring, so I can't imagine they are worn out. Now I am just a tired and sweaty mess.

Hmm... Don't think I have put this picture up...

Sorry, all - I have had a wonderful long weekend and somehow managed to run down the batteries on both digital cameras, so you are being treated to a Willow and Jo self-portrait from Mother's Day.

I have been keeping up with my July Jamboree - although I have to say that right off the bat I am having trouble with the 'not doing the same thing two days in a row' rule. I have made an executive decision - riding the stationary bike and cycling outside are *not* the same thing. Semantics, I suppose - but riding the stationary bike is something I can always do at home when there are so many other things to do. I have been doing my cycling today in 10 minutes increments as I have been washing the mountains of laundry we accumulate during the week.

Tara - there has been a bit of a delay in the armwarmers. The youngest person in this house knocked a cup of milk into my knitting bag. Suffice to say, it was a good thing for all involved that I was not home when this happened and my second-in-command managed to hang the bag up to dry before I had a shit fit.

July Jamboree

Half way through the year. Did anyone think of that today? That 2009 is half over? Blows my mind.

I'm finding it hard to stay on a schedule right now. Andrew has a new job, Willow is in summer camp, I seem to be working all sorts of hours (and as assinine as it might seem to some, usually because I really like what I was doing and didn't want to stop). My house is in shambles now that my kept man is no longer kept. One of Willow's playmates and her mother stopped by while I was exercising tonight and my first thought when Andrew told me this was, "Ugh... did they see inside the house?" And I just get this feeling that the month is going to fly by.

I've decided to chart my exercise for July - see the July Jamboree section to the right? Exercise, to me at the moment, oddly slows me down. Not physically - obviously I am there to work muscles and bring up my heart rate - but it slows my head down. I stop thinking a million miles a minute about what I need to do next and sometimes more pressingly, all the things I didn't do (ahem - laundry on the loveseat that was folded two nights ago). I am striving for 30 minutes a day, and to not do the exact same exercise two days in a row (and trust me, the latter will be more difficult - I am definitely a creature of habit).

Now, as for the messy house... it's a good thing I have a long weekend ahead of me.

Progress

Tara, armwarmer the first is almost done:



Modelled by Tori, daughter of my friend, Michelle. Yeah, I could have modeled it, but my rounded short forelimbs wouldn't have done it justice.

The silly thing is, working on dpns, it took me forever to get the first 30 rows or so done (including the knuckle portion, the thumb opening and then rejoining into a tube), but once I switched to the two circular needles (Friday afternoon) the rest breezed by. I hope to have both finished by this coming weekend and then I will pop them in the mail.

I will leave you with some latte love:

We have tomatoes!

There was a lot of squealing going on at Chez Jo yesterday. It started in the morning when I saw this through the sunroom window:



We have tomatoes! This is my Tumbling Tom tomato plant that I was worried was going to die because the leave changed from a young healthy lime-green colour to grey-green. It doesn't seem to have affected the plants fruit-producing ability. Andrew wonders if this is the plant's natural state because while looking a sickly grey-green, the leaves are healthy.

Here's a close up of one of the tomatoes:



Woo-hoo!

I wasn't able to go out and take pictures until much later in the afternoon, and while checking out my other plants, I saw this and screamed:



See it? Here's a close up:



It's a baby cucumber! I've never tried growing cucumbers before, and I am so chuffed that they are growing so well! (And that the recent rains hadn't washed everything away!)

700

Who would have guessed? I just noticed when I logged in that this is my 700th post.

Tara, I began working on your armwarmers:



Unfortunately, I had to rip them out because they were just too wide. I knit until they were long enough for me to stick my hand in, and the 2X2 ribbing wasn't even stretched. The pattern said to use size 5 needles and that gauge wasn't important because these were meant to be stretchy - but these could have fit some ham-fisted individual. So, I will try again tonight with size 3 needles - I think size 4 needles would still be too big.

Back to the drawing board...

Tara, Your Yarn Arrived: An Unintential YPF

My friend Tara and I are trading skillsets - in return for her making Willow some adorable clothes, I will be knitting her some armwarmers. After much viewing of green yarn, she chose Claudia Handpaints Sport in the Jungle colourway:



And a close up:



Very lovely!

Since the yarn is variegated, I think I am going to use a simple pattern to show off the pretty greens. I can't wait to start!

Sharkgirl and Tandem Cycling

Yeah... puzzle that one out.

Look in Willow's mouth:



Look closer:



Now is the title starting to make sense? My child has two rows of teeth - the dentist assures me that it isn't permanent. She will be seven soon, and I know my friends who have children around the same age have lost teeth already, but Willow is being as stubborn as her mother was about this. I don't think I lost my first tooth until second grade. I remember my teachers having a list on the board of everyone who had lost teeth and how many teeth and my name was never up there. In fact, I was still losing teeth in junior high school - I am missing my canine teeth in my eighth grade school picture.

Um, yeah - enough of my issues...

The dentist says not even to worry about the two new teeth being placed behind - that as soon as the old teeth come out her tongue will push the new teeth into place. It just looks odd for now. Mom and Dad, I am sure I will be bringing a gap-toothed beauty with me this summer. Her two lower teeth and upper teeth are all quite loose and I have a sneaky suspicion she is going to loose them all at the same time.

So, where does the tandem cycling fit in? Andrew and I love cycling - it is something we used to to all the time when we lived in Boulder, Colorado. When we lived in Japan we didn't drive, so it was bicycles and trains everywhere as well. We have been trying to get Willow to ride her bike without training wheels with limited success (she is okay as long as she hasn't figured out you have let go of the bike and she is on her own...) We had seen people here in town riding these tandem bicycles for adults and children, and found out the child's part is just an attachment to the adult's bike:



It is so much fun! Willow was quite apprehensive the first time. "Daddy, slow down, Daddy, not so fast!" By the time they had gone around the block once it had become, "Daddy, again! Let's go again! I like speed bumps!" The bike does have limitations - you have to be careful with turns (similar to how a limo makes wide turns because of the length) but we are very happy with it. Not only do we all get to cycle together, but we have peace of mind that she is actually with us and not weaving away into traffic. We have a bike hitch for the car, and we are trying to find a local place to take a trip to go cycling for the day. I know there are bike paths down in Rehoboth Beach and up in Gettysburg - does anyone have any other neat ideas?

Shrimp on the Barbie

I think this has become my new favourite summer food... It's so simple and quick! The recipe I use was adapted from one I found on Allrecipes.com.

1.5 pounds raw shrimp
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp kosher salt
paprika (to taste)
white pepper (to taste)
bamboo skewers

Crush garlic and salt together, add in olive oil and spices to make a greasy paste (trust me, it is a lot more appetizing than it looks). Rinse shrimp and put in gallon ziploc bag. Scrape in paste, and moosh all over shrimp, seal bag and toss in refrigerator for a few hours. Start soaking the bamboo skewers at least 30 minutes before you plan to grill or they will catch on fire.

Take the shrimp out of the refrigerator and start to thread onto the skewers. Hold the shrimp in a backward 'C' shape and pierce it through the broadest part and the tail. My skewers are about 7" long and I can get 5 on each. Once the grill is hot, it will only take about 3 minutes on each side to cook them. I love how shrimp have a built-in doneness indicator - when they are raw they are weirdly translucent grey - when done, opaque and pinky-white. Enjoy!

I took some pictures of the garden while we were waiting for the grill to heat up. Here is my Sweet Basil:



That big leaf in the front is about the size of my palm. Here is the Lime Basil:



I foresee pesto on our dinner menu this week. Another one of my favourite summer meals. I make a really quick and simplified pesto - 4 cups basil leaves, 1/2 cup zesty fat free Kraft Italian dressing, 1/4 cup parmesan cheese. I put it in a container and liquefy it with my hand blender. You could probably add other stuff to this to zing it up, but I have to deal with a 6-year-old's palate.

Cherry tomatoes planted in the ground:



Cherry tomatoes growing in the basket:



The plant still isn't healthily green, but it is producing lots of fruit.

My eggplant has lots of flowers on it:



As does my acorn squash:



And look what I found hanging out in my cucumber plant:



I told you there was knitting going on. I finished this sock except for grafting the toe while catching a custom True Blood marathon on Demand (watching all the episodes I wanted to see again). These socks are definitely for me - no more sweet-talking me into giving them to someone else!

Gotta go - the new season of True Blood starts in 4 minutes!

Sigh...

It's been a louse-y couple of days.

Yeah, I spelled that correctly.

Help...

A Rose By Any Other Name

On Sunday we met Asami, Gara, and their boys at Buckley's Tavern Pajama Brunch - brunch is half price if you wear your jammies - and it was totally worth it to have Andrew go out in public in his Superman jammies. No pictures, however - I may have got him outside in the jammies, but he drew the line at the picture taking.

After brunch we headed out to the Brandywine Zoo and Josephine Gardens, where I found some beautiful roses. Unfortunately, with all of the rain we had last week, many of the roses were rotting on their stems, but I did find these ones relatively unscathed:







And as for knitting... I started something new last night... and it isn't a sock!

Gentle Prodding

My life has not been exciting of late. I have some big deadlines at work, the weather has been crappy, and I have been in a reading mood rather than a knitting mood... all things that contribute to a quiet blog.

Before I went to bed last night I checked my mail one last time and saw this missive from my Dad:

dear jo

i look at your blog everyday this week and i have memorized your latest post. get with the program

love dad

Okay, you know it's bad when your Dad feels the need to point out your paltry blogging...

Here, I'll try to distract you with some pictures from the garden!



Look what I have! As happy as I am to see the little tomatoes, I am a bit worried for the plant itself:



It's in the middle of our yard, it's getting full sun, and after the 4 days of rain we had this week, it's plenty hydrated, but it's turning yellow in spots and some branches are falling off. Does anyone know any tomato first aid?

My spaghetti squash has a bloom on it:



Weeds, too, apparently. That's what happens when it rains for nearly a week and we can't get out and pull things.

This is a cool one - I had to stand very still to get this picture:



It was cooler when I thought I was taking a picture of a bee... until Andrew pointed out this was a yellowjacket, not a honeybee.

And lastly, a late bloomer from my FIL's garden:



As I mentioned above, I have been in a reading mood lately - and in no particular order, here is what I have read in the last week or so:

* Succubus on Top by Richelle Mead
* A Touch Of Evil by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp
* Night Huntress by Yasmine Galenorn
* Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
* The Devil's Due by Jenna Black

and last night I started reading:

* Demon Mistress by Yasmine Galenorn

And before anyone gets overly concerned about the titles, they are all urban fantasy - my preferred form of literary escapism. And trust me, I need a lot of escapism right now.