Atelier 918

Crows and Pizza

I don't have any new photos to share of the garden though our lilacs out front started blooming yesterday and there are more flowers every day.

This morning I had the odd experience of thinking a crow had died in the backyard -- well he did look dead there for a while. But no, he must have injured himself. But boy did his friends rally for him. We had at least 8 crows up in our black walnut and cherry in the back yelling at my cats and dogs to stay away. They weren't too upset about us going out there to try to figure out what to do to help the situation. We ended up just opening up the gate and the crow half flew and half hopped out the gate where our pets wouldn't bother with him. I didn't see him when I got home this evening, most likely he just flew into a branch or something and just needed some time to recoup. At least I hope so.

Here's a shot of some shmancy pizza we got last week at Via Tribunali, a newer pizza place with high-priced individual pies on Capitol Hill. Mine had prociutto and arugula with shaved parmesan on top, my partner had the house specialty made with buffalo mozzarella.

Muffins!

While waiting for the spackling and caulk to dry I decided to whip up some of my favorite muffins. It's a recipe I adapted to make them more healthy.

Lemony Blueberry Muffins - makes 1 dozen, medium-sized muffins

1 egg
3/4 cup whole milk or half & half (whatever you have on hand)
1/2 cup safflower oil (or other vegetable oil, you could substitute melted butter as well if that's all you have)

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup wheat bran or wheat germ
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt

1 cup frozen blueberries
Zest of one lemon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit. Grease bottoms of muffin tin cups. Mix milk, egg and oil until throroughly blended. Add in flours, bran or wheat germ, sugar, baking powder and salt to wet mixture and stir until combined (will still be lumpy). Fold in blueberries and lemon zest. Spoon batter into muffin tin cups and sprinkle tops with sugar. Back until tops are golden, about 18-20 minutes. Remove muffins from tin right away and put onto a baking rack to cool.

Note -- you can do this recipe with fresh blueberries but you might need to add a little more milk and you also might need to adjust the sugar a little.

 

Mom's coming for a visit

My mother, who just finished her radiation therapy for breast cancer (caught early thank goodness), is coming to visit at the beginning of October. What better impetus then for getting projects completed.

I think we can get the bathroom completed in time, well not sure about the shower as we still haven't purchased any track or anything to hang a shower curtain.

The office trim just has a few spots needing to get stripped down again so I'm going to try to get on that this week. After that my partner will do a sanding and then we're going to call the prep work done and I can start on priming the walls and woodwork. It's ambitious to try to get it done in the time alloted but we can try, right?

Since Seattle's gotten cold and wintery all of the sudden, I was in the mood to make some soup. Here's my recipe in case you want to make some too:

Turkey Vegetable Soup

1/2-1 whole onion

1 large carrot diced

1-2 ribs of celery diced

1 turkey cutlet diced

1 box of chicken broth

1 vegetable bouillon cube

1 cup of pearl barley

Bay leaf

Black pepper and salt to taste

Parsley

Heat up a little olive oil in a large soup pot and saute the vegetables and then add in the turkey and stir occasionally to help it cook evenly and not stick. When the vegetables are firm but most of the way cooked, pour in the box of broth and then add in more water until the pot is more than halfway filled. Throw in the boullion cube and a bay leaf. Add in the barley. Bring it up to a boil and then lower down to a simmer. Add in parsley, salt and pepper when it's close to done for taste. When the barley is cooked through it should be ready, adjust thickness of the soup with water if too thick.

You could also add in other chopped vegetables such as tomatoes, mushrooms, turnip, pepper, parsnip, beet, kale (add towards the end of cooking so its not over cooked), etc.

Soup is easy and good for you.