This week in stuff [condensed version]
Apr. 21st, 2008 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellymellLast week was a busy one.
New Patio Furniture
Wednesday, we got new patio furniture. It's fantastic! I've got a picture, but I'm too lazy to upload photos right now. This is the first house we've actually had more than cheap camp chairs to sit in outside. Chris found a random guy with a truck in the parking lot to help him get it home. Turns out the guy is one of our neighbors (lives a street away) and owns a painting business. Got an estimate for painting the upper walls of our foyer and repairing a hole in the ceiling in the same area. Very reasonable!
Gardening
Have a bunch of pictures of blooming tulips and some microscopic gardens I found on our fence. I'm guessing they're blooming lichens, but they're really awesome. I've never seen anything like it.
Picked up the rest of the tomato plants and pepper plants we'd need for our veggie garden. Need to get rid of some moles before I plant the veggie bed.
Loaded and unloaded 10 bags of topsoil (40 lb each) and 5 bags of mulch (guessing about 40 lb each) by myself. Felt good that it was actually fairly easy for me to do (yoga must be paying off in the form of strong biceps and core muscles, desperately need to add the running to burn off some of the fat).
Splurged on a couple of Black Tropicanna cannas (black foliage with what looks like tangerine blooms) for the back yard (uncertain if the Wyoming canna bulbs I've already planted back there will actually do anything, since they've spent a year in the garage, unplanted).
Sowed seeds for annual flowers in starters (I know, I'm late doing that, but I've got stuff to put in while they're growing to size).
Weeded sunflower garden to get ready to sow seeds there. Decided to do away with the black plastic mulch there, since I want to plant several more types in layers and would have to cut three times as many holes as were already there. Made for easy weeding though! Just pull up the plastic, the weeds were rooted on top of or in it. Started spreading more dirt in that bed but it started raining on Saturday, so cut that work short. That leaves just one bed that still has the plastic in it and I'm slowly pulling it up there as well. I was glad I used it last year to get the beds established, but now I think I can do without it.
Moved several of our seasonal house plants back outside to their patio home. Noticing some color changes from the extra sunlight.
Sprayed the Majesty palm with a solution of rubbing alcohol and water to kill the scale. Looks like it's working, but will probably have to keep doing that weekly for a while. Noticed a little on the Chinese fan palm now and sprayed them as well.
Shopping
Thursday, my mother-in-law came up on a whim. Turns out my Alloy package arrived at our old address in Huntsville (yay, three new pairs of pants that fit!). The new landlord there was kind enough to get in touch with me. Martha went out to pick it up for me, then decided to just come up. She had some Macy's gift cards to spend and there's no Macy's in Huntsville. She spent the night Thursday, then we got up Friday and went back to Cool Springs. I had $80 in old Parisian gift cards that Belk will still honor. So, I got a couple of shirts on clearance, but unfortunately only have $15 left on the card after that (they're expensive! or at least the one in Cool Springs is). Martha still had about $30 left on her cards, so we went back over to Macy's and she told me to spend it. I dug through clearance stuff there as well, but wound up with 4 shirts. Three were $5 each and one was $10. Although I felt really good with what I wound up with, I came away from the day with an absolute disdain for clothes shopping. I hate the styles that are popular right now. I'm not too keen on my body shape right now either, but I'm trying to remedy that. But at least I shouldn't have to do much more shopping for a while. I've got 6 new shirts and 3 new pairs of pants. I'm thinking about getting a bunch of blanks at Dharma Trading and dyeing them the colors I want. Would work great for things like tank tops, yoga pants, and just kind of plain, solid color essentials.
Zoo
Yesterday we took an impromptu trip to the zoo after Chris finished his brew day. The neighbors had invited us along. All of us have memberships, so it's nice to be able to do that. They just added two African Porcupines that are really cute. It was a gorgeous day to be out!
Cooking
In my culinary adventures this week, biscuit attempt #2 was an edible batch Saturday morning. They're not light and fluffy like I wanted (aiming for Loveless Cafe, light southern biscuit), but they taste good and they're not hard as a rock. I wound up having to add flour to the recipe and kneading by hand instead of the waxed paper/parchment. The top and bottom of the kneaded dough looked right, but the middle was still very sticky. I had to be very careful about cutting them. It'll just take some practice and recipe tweaks I think.
My pie dough is a work in progress. Late last night, I wound up just breaking down and buying a package of the "just roll out and bake" stuff at the grocery when I ran for Chinese food for dinner. I've got a bag of my dough in the fridge that I'm going to try to play with. Worried I'd add too much water (since Alton's recipe says most beginners make this mistake), I don't think I added enough and it came out crumbly. I did the test of squeezing it and seeing if it held shape and it did, but I guess not enough. But I think I can throw it back in the food processor and try again. Just not sure what I'll fill it with now if I do get it to work, since my pot pie is done. Maybe I'll make a quiche.
Speaking of the pot pie, I had made stock so I could get the chicken pieces from the carcass leftovers and use the stock to make a gravy, but the stock came out funny. It was really cloudy and smells like bones (almost like sticking your nose in a bag of bone meal, and if I had thought about that correlation before tossing it down the drain last night, I probably could have used it in the garden or compost, especially since I don't season my stock with salt or anything else). I had made the gravy, but it just didn't taste or smell right even after seasoning. So not wanting to risk it, I chucked it all and started the gravy over with some beef bullion (I know, weird, but it was the only bullion I had) and milk to make it creamy. Maybe I boiled the stock too high for too long or something. Any ideas? I've never had problems making stock before. Just throw the bones in a pot and simmer for several hours or as long as a day. Wonder if it had to do with the bones being raw and not roasted first. Trying to remember if I've ever done it without roasting the bones first and I'm not sure I have.
New Patio Furniture
Wednesday, we got new patio furniture. It's fantastic! I've got a picture, but I'm too lazy to upload photos right now. This is the first house we've actually had more than cheap camp chairs to sit in outside. Chris found a random guy with a truck in the parking lot to help him get it home. Turns out the guy is one of our neighbors (lives a street away) and owns a painting business. Got an estimate for painting the upper walls of our foyer and repairing a hole in the ceiling in the same area. Very reasonable!
Gardening
Have a bunch of pictures of blooming tulips and some microscopic gardens I found on our fence. I'm guessing they're blooming lichens, but they're really awesome. I've never seen anything like it.
Picked up the rest of the tomato plants and pepper plants we'd need for our veggie garden. Need to get rid of some moles before I plant the veggie bed.
Loaded and unloaded 10 bags of topsoil (40 lb each) and 5 bags of mulch (guessing about 40 lb each) by myself. Felt good that it was actually fairly easy for me to do (yoga must be paying off in the form of strong biceps and core muscles, desperately need to add the running to burn off some of the fat).
Splurged on a couple of Black Tropicanna cannas (black foliage with what looks like tangerine blooms) for the back yard (uncertain if the Wyoming canna bulbs I've already planted back there will actually do anything, since they've spent a year in the garage, unplanted).
Sowed seeds for annual flowers in starters (I know, I'm late doing that, but I've got stuff to put in while they're growing to size).
Weeded sunflower garden to get ready to sow seeds there. Decided to do away with the black plastic mulch there, since I want to plant several more types in layers and would have to cut three times as many holes as were already there. Made for easy weeding though! Just pull up the plastic, the weeds were rooted on top of or in it. Started spreading more dirt in that bed but it started raining on Saturday, so cut that work short. That leaves just one bed that still has the plastic in it and I'm slowly pulling it up there as well. I was glad I used it last year to get the beds established, but now I think I can do without it.
Moved several of our seasonal house plants back outside to their patio home. Noticing some color changes from the extra sunlight.
Sprayed the Majesty palm with a solution of rubbing alcohol and water to kill the scale. Looks like it's working, but will probably have to keep doing that weekly for a while. Noticed a little on the Chinese fan palm now and sprayed them as well.
Shopping
Thursday, my mother-in-law came up on a whim. Turns out my Alloy package arrived at our old address in Huntsville (yay, three new pairs of pants that fit!). The new landlord there was kind enough to get in touch with me. Martha went out to pick it up for me, then decided to just come up. She had some Macy's gift cards to spend and there's no Macy's in Huntsville. She spent the night Thursday, then we got up Friday and went back to Cool Springs. I had $80 in old Parisian gift cards that Belk will still honor. So, I got a couple of shirts on clearance, but unfortunately only have $15 left on the card after that (they're expensive! or at least the one in Cool Springs is). Martha still had about $30 left on her cards, so we went back over to Macy's and she told me to spend it. I dug through clearance stuff there as well, but wound up with 4 shirts. Three were $5 each and one was $10. Although I felt really good with what I wound up with, I came away from the day with an absolute disdain for clothes shopping. I hate the styles that are popular right now. I'm not too keen on my body shape right now either, but I'm trying to remedy that. But at least I shouldn't have to do much more shopping for a while. I've got 6 new shirts and 3 new pairs of pants. I'm thinking about getting a bunch of blanks at Dharma Trading and dyeing them the colors I want. Would work great for things like tank tops, yoga pants, and just kind of plain, solid color essentials.
Zoo
Yesterday we took an impromptu trip to the zoo after Chris finished his brew day. The neighbors had invited us along. All of us have memberships, so it's nice to be able to do that. They just added two African Porcupines that are really cute. It was a gorgeous day to be out!
Cooking
In my culinary adventures this week, biscuit attempt #2 was an edible batch Saturday morning. They're not light and fluffy like I wanted (aiming for Loveless Cafe, light southern biscuit), but they taste good and they're not hard as a rock. I wound up having to add flour to the recipe and kneading by hand instead of the waxed paper/parchment. The top and bottom of the kneaded dough looked right, but the middle was still very sticky. I had to be very careful about cutting them. It'll just take some practice and recipe tweaks I think.
My pie dough is a work in progress. Late last night, I wound up just breaking down and buying a package of the "just roll out and bake" stuff at the grocery when I ran for Chinese food for dinner. I've got a bag of my dough in the fridge that I'm going to try to play with. Worried I'd add too much water (since Alton's recipe says most beginners make this mistake), I don't think I added enough and it came out crumbly. I did the test of squeezing it and seeing if it held shape and it did, but I guess not enough. But I think I can throw it back in the food processor and try again. Just not sure what I'll fill it with now if I do get it to work, since my pot pie is done. Maybe I'll make a quiche.
Speaking of the pot pie, I had made stock so I could get the chicken pieces from the carcass leftovers and use the stock to make a gravy, but the stock came out funny. It was really cloudy and smells like bones (almost like sticking your nose in a bag of bone meal, and if I had thought about that correlation before tossing it down the drain last night, I probably could have used it in the garden or compost, especially since I don't season my stock with salt or anything else). I had made the gravy, but it just didn't taste or smell right even after seasoning. So not wanting to risk it, I chucked it all and started the gravy over with some beef bullion (I know, weird, but it was the only bullion I had) and milk to make it creamy. Maybe I boiled the stock too high for too long or something. Any ideas? I've never had problems making stock before. Just throw the bones in a pot and simmer for several hours or as long as a day. Wonder if it had to do with the bones being raw and not roasted first. Trying to remember if I've ever done it without roasting the bones first and I'm not sure I have.
