Sunday, November 11, 2012

Weekend Recap 11/11


 
On Friday Miss CutiePie picked me up and we met up with Miss KnowItAll at Pippa's Real Tea Shop in Port Townsend for lunch and tea and, of course, scones and jam.  What a treat!!  This is a tea experience taken to a whole new level and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Each of our teas came in the above pictured contraption, served with a little hour glass.  When the hour glass ran out, we plunged our tea.  Very civilized.

I want to also mention the scones.  Now these are not Puyallup Fair scones which are as big as a hamburger bun.  These are dainty scones, so you can really pile on the jam and clotted cream and not feel like a pig, but that has never stopped me in the past, now that I think about it.  And the place was doing a very brisk business and sold out of their pasties and other British type foods, so go early.



This is a picture of my beautiful nasturtium bed after a couple of nights at 27 degrees.  Green slime, but now it is time for the vincas (on the left) to show off with their sweet little blue flowers.  It will look much nicer once I get the nasties out of there.  I was going to work outside today before the rain came but I froze my a** off on my walk this morning.  It was 37 degrees, not bad, but when the wind came up, I was unhappy and my ears were like ice.

Yesterday I was planning on making the polenta and kale recipe that Margaret had on her blog, but I was going to substitute my Swiss chard.  It looked like this:


So I went to plan B which was spicy chicken soup.  I'm going to compost the frozen leaves and it looks like the newer more protected leaves will make it for a while longer, but I was worried that if I cut them, it would be over for the chard for the year.  We'll see.

QFC had pot roast on BOGO this week.  I usually don't buy meat on BOGO because I believe that they jack the price per pound up and you aren't really getting that good of a deal, but I was in the mood for pot roast.  I found two small roasts for $16 and $17 going at $5.99 per pound, so I paid $3 a pound, which is more reasonable.  It scares me to even think about the Christmas prime rib if a small pot roast could go for $17.  If you see a deal on prime rib, jump on it and freeze it.

So, speaking of pot roast, I got mine going in the crock pot this morning, complete with the carrots and the last potato from the garden.  Check out the difference in the potato from the garden and the store potatoes on the right:


Which would you rather eat??  I'm gonna grow a lot more potatoes next year.  And onions.  They were definitely the highlight of the garden this year.  I cut up the carrots and potatoes and put the roast on top.  I covered it with an old 60s recipe, which is a can of mushroom soup, a package of onion soup mix and a big splash of Lea & Perrins (mixed first.)  This makes fabulous gravy and gives the roast and veggies really good flavor.  The leftovers make great soup with the addition of beef broth or water.

Amaryllis Update:

It doesn't look good for the amaryllis.  The greenery had turned to mush so I gave it a trim.  I don't see anything that gives me hope, but I'll give it until the 1st before I go out and buy another one.

Here is a picture of the Christmas cactus from my mom's house.  For the last couple of years it has decided to grow some white flowers along with the red.  Very strange, indeed.


I plan to repot it after the it quits blooming.  Here is how a broken piece (thanks, DC) that I planted that lives above my computer is doing:

 

New Bird Feeding Station Update:

The birds that hang out in my back yard are blonde birds.  They kept going to the old moldy hard to clean feeder which was empty, so I sprinkled bird seed all around the new feeders.  They gobbled it up and had bird fights but still ignored my new feeders.  After several days, they have finally noticed the new feeders.  Sheesh!!




 

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