Author: Maria Bornski

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New Shorts

Thanks to some body size changes, I found myself at the start of this warm season without any shorts that fit.  I’ve half heartedly looked for a new pair, but generally ran into a few problems — current fashion seems to be for shorts much shorter than I like to wear, shorts that are a length I like have the same problems as many jeans and are too big in the middle if they fit my thighs, etc.  While reflecting on this, I had the thought ‘I wish I had a pair of shorts that fit like my favorite style of jeans do’ which then led to the realization that I could make this happen!

I pulled out my sewing machine and went to work.  It was pretty simple.  First, I put on the pair of jeans I wanted to alter and marked them where I wanted to cut.  I wanted shorts that hit just at the top of my knee when cuffed, so I marked them just below the knee.  I took them back off, laid them out on my work bench and cut the legs.  I focused more on making sure the legs were the same length than on cutting exactly where I’d marked.

Next, I sewed one seam around the whole cutoff bottom.  This should help prevent fraying in the future.  Then, I cuffed the pants, ironed the cuff flat, and sewed right on the original seams to keep the cuff in place.  I didn’t sew around the whole bottom this time, as I didn’t think that would look good.

And with that, voila, new shorts.  It only took me about 20 minutes, and these shorts fit great — they’re the exact length I wanted and they fit well in my middle and my thighs.

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Garden, Irrigation Edition

When we first moved in to this house, the back garden irrigation was handled by a single drip hose wound through all the beds.  This hose started at the water spigot, went under the first bed edge, up into the bed, looped around in the bed, went back underground, then back up into the next bed.  This continued for all four beds.

This setup had a few problems.  First, one of the hoses was severely degraded from laying in the sun so long.  Second, the single hose nature of the setup meant the decayed section was nearly impossible to replace.  I tried, but was unable to make the setup not leak.  Finally, the spray wasn’t directed in any form, wasting a lot of water.

So, we replaced the setup with a more directed irrigation system.  First, Matt dug from the spigot, alongside one bed, into the center between all the beds, then up into each one.  He ran irrigation line up into each bed from this center line, through the holes into each bed.

Once we had the center lines in, we were able to easily connect more hose, loop it about the bed based on the locations of the plants we’d already put in, and then put in smaller hoses and drippers to reach each plant.  We also used elbows where we wanted more exact turns.

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Garden, Spring Edition

The rose bushes and the irises have been in full bloom lately, giving the backyard lots of pretty colors.  Also contributing to the colors are the potted marigolds I’ve put around for pest control.

I was reminded that marigolds are a pest deterrent when we were in Cuba in March.  Almost all farming in Cuba is organic, because fertilizer and pesticide are too expensive for most farms to afford.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the back garden.  I ripped out the kale and peas I planted in the fall, as they were looking pretty sad.  This made room for strawberries and marigolds.  I left in the spinach and brussels sprouts.

In another bed, I planted tomatoes, basil, jalepenos, serranos, and bell peppers.  Again, I included some marigolds.

I added marigolds in with the blueberry bushes.  The bushes are looking a little sad — I’m not sure if it’s a lack of sun or a lack of water.  I added a couple of extra irrigation hoses, so we’ll find out if it’s water soon enough.

In the fourth bed, I planted last year’s jalepeno plant that had been living in a pot.  I also planted the rest of the marigolds (I definitely over bought!), a random leek that decided to sprout instead of compost, and some green onions that I planted from the very roots of green onions we bought to eat.

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I also cleaned up leaves and weeds from the spaces between the beds.  Eventually, I’d like to put in some ground cover back there too.  My current though is that a crushed rock path would be nice, but I haven’t priced it out.

 

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Mulching the Rose Bushes

I’ve been entirely unable to keep up with the weeds in the rose beds on one side of the yard.  Today, we took advantage of the rose bushes being cut back for winter and the weeds being less robust due to winter and weed whacking, and we spruced up the beds.

We laid down landscape fabric, then covered with mulch.

Here are the before pictures:

And here are the after pictures:

I’m much happier with it like this.  We might have underbought a bit on the mulch, so we’ll see what it looks like in a few days.

Now that this side looks so good, I’m definitely doing the beds on the other side of the yard sometime in the next few weeks.

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Recent Yummy Things

We’ve made a number of yummy things recently.

We made pretzel dogs following this recipe: http://joythebaker.com/2012/01/mini-pretzel-dogs/

We harvested a couple of buckets of citrus fruit off the tree in our back yard, and squeezed them for juice for mimosas.  We think they’re Satsuma Mandarins, and they made delicious mimosas.

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And we made a batch of bread dough we can keep in the fridge and bake parts of whenever we want.  We’ve had lots of success with this in the past, and so we started it back up again.

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Beef Stew

TriTip

 

Inspired by a delicious beef stew my aunt made for us over Christmas and the tri tip we’ve had in the freezer for a couple of months, we made a beef stew this week.  We prepared everything on Tuesday night, then Matt threw it in the crock pot Wednesday morning.

First, I cut up some onions, carrots, and potatoes and bagged them up for refrigeration.

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Next, I cut up the tri tip, and put it in a big bowl.  I then tossed the meat with half a cup of flour and bagged it too.

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Finally, I prepped a “flavoring” mix.  I chopped up some garlic, and threw that and the following things into a pyrex bowl: ketchup, beef “better than bullion (~1Tbsp), worcestershire, soy sauce, red pepper, chipotle hot sauce, bay leaves, paprika, pepper, and salt.

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The seasoning bowl, the bag of veggies, and the bag of meat all went into the fridge.  On Wednesday morning, Matt threw it all in the crockpot with some water.  When he came home, he also added some “pork chop” seasoning mix, cumin, cayenne, more salt, red pepper, chipotle hot sauce, and worcestershire.

I didn’t take any pictures of the completed product, but it was delicious.  Some of the beef and potatoes fell apart, and helped the flour thicken the mix.  We ate it with some good rosemary olive oil bread.  This was definitely a successful recipe, and we got at least three meals for both of us plus one for just me out of it.

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Holiday Decorations

I don’t like the weather this time of year (why can’t it rain only when I’m not trying to go anywhere?), nor do I like how early it gets dark, but I do love all the holiday lights and decorations.

For indoor decorations this year, we (read: Matt) hung blue and white LED icicle lights around the top of the dining room.  They really light up the room, and we hardly need other light in that room.

 

We also put up a Christmas tree.  Our Santa hat made a re-appearance as a tree-topper. It’s a great topper, because it covers up any goofy looking tree tops.  Our tree lights are also LEDs — we really like that they don’t get very hot and that they use less power.

For the outdoor decorations, we put a wreath on the door, lights around the front pillars, and light nets on the bushes.  We also replaced the bulbs in the porch light with one red and one green bulb.

The lights are actually so bright that we can see them from at least the end of the block.  They make it way easier to find our house.

We got Helo in on the Holiday action, too, with a holiday sweater.

And finally, we cleaned out the fireplace, & lit a fire today.  It’s pretty exciting to have a wood burning fireplace, instead of a gas one like at our last place.

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Crossfit 1 December, 2012 — Clean & Jerk Clinic

Quick checkin on Crossfit — In addition to my usual 3 visits per week, I went to a Clean & Jerk clinic today.

By the end of the hour and a half of drills, cleans, jerks, and clean & jerks, I clean & jerk-ed my current one rep max a couple of times.  As my coach says, I’m going to “crush” my one rep max next time.

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Delicious, Delicious Pot Pie

So, we make pot pie on a regular basis, but I think this one wins.  Here’s what we did:

First, I harvested some kale, rosemary, and peas from the garden.  I also grabbed some carrots from our farm box, and a potato and an onion we had lying around.

I chopped everything up, boiled the potato, carrot, and peas, and sauteed the kale.  I then chopped up some chicken and sauteed it with the onion and rosemary.

The veggies went into a baking dish.

Then I mixed the chicken in with the veggies.  Next, I made a roux with 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup flour, and then added almond milk until it looked right.  The texture was a little weird — more like a dough than a sauce, but once I mixed it up with the veggies and chicken, it worked out totally fine.  If I had to guess, I’d say I used maybe a cup of almond milk, but I definitely didn’t measure.

I then topped it with a pie crust that Matt made.  I believe the crust had butter, water, flour, and some herbs.

I popped the whole thing in the oven at 400 degrees for ~40 minutes, and it came out golden and delicious.

I will definitely make pot pie this way again.  In the past, we’ve made the crust with shortening, and we haven’t mixed the milk in with the roux.  Using a butter crust and mixing the milk (well, almond milk) into the roux were definitely good choices.