An Abundance of Life

It's hot. No, that's not right. It's blisteringly hot. Yes, that nearly covers it. With "vacation" winding to a close on the Suburban Plot, we find ourselves in the belly of a record-breaking beast of a heatwave. In just the past two days we've scaled thermal heights I thought impossible outside of Death Valley, seeing temperatures of 122 F (50 C) in sunshine, 113 F (45 C) in the shade. Oh yes, it's hot. But, though life may struggle in the heat, it does not vanish or even pause for very long.

In the weeks since New Year's, despite our efforts to avoid all forms of work or change, we've been repeatedly visited by the all powerful Fairy of All Things Living. She has beaten us over the head with her magic stick of Lots-n-Lots, and we've surrendered to her will.

The first thwack of the fairy's wand came on January 9th when our beloved kelpie-cross dog, Laney, began panting and scratching, plodding and pacing, and gave birth to her litter of unexpected puppies. Hubby and I had placed bets on the date and size of delivery many times in the days following Christmas, but all such things come in their own time (and number). The husband was banking on three, possibly four pups. I put my money closer to seven. Neither of us had any notion that we'd soon be playing host to eight little wrinkly balls of canine cuteness. But, out they came, and our evenings have never been more amusing.

The little fluffballs, now three weeks old, are smelly, and noisy, and pee on just about anything, but then they lick your chin or roll over for a bit of belly scratching, and all is forgiven. We have five weeks more with seven of these eight critters (we're keeping one), and I'm positive it will be a laughter-filled adventure.

One might think adding eight living creatures to our home might be enough to appease the Abundance Fairy, but no! She came back for a second swat just days after the puppies breathed their first. She brought with her a staggering near 13 kilos (28 pounds) of apricots. Our huge, ancient "Plum-ricot" grafted tree, for the first time in hubby's recollection of his five years here, burst forth with enough fruit to keep us well stocked for over a year.

But, wait—There's more! Unsatisfied with my hours of jam stirring, chopping, blanching and packaging, that crafty fairy thought it great fun to toss in over 22 kilos (49 pounds) of tomatoes! So, it was onto evenings spent with the husband, dicing tomatoes for jar upon jar of fresh red, green, and black beauties, and some of the best marinara sauce I've ever made.

Content with what small respite we've enjoyed since the holidays, the deluge of home-and-garden goodness has prompted my enthusiastic return to the blogosphere and all the wonderful people she holds. The next few posts will delve into the dirty details of all we've done in our month off from home improvement and online interactions. I'll be posting photos of the finished (and semi-finished) rooms of our house, recipes for our recently harvested produce, a view into our new, lighter summer breakfast, and how we're managing to keep our garden alive through such murderous heat.

The bread dough is calling for a punch and knead, so that is the end, for today. I do hope you'll rejoin our journey and continue to share yours as well. Oh, and Margo? I haven't forgotten you, and will happily post my Honey Cornbread recipe in the next couple days.

Hazy Crazy Holidays of Summer

Christmas and Hanukkah have passed us by, expanded waistlines and shredded piles of spent gift wrap have been left in their wake. Tonight, the eve of the new year, will conclude my first holiday season in the land down under.

It's been a busy season, jam packed with home project mania and brief forays into the real world for family dinners and shopping trips, but all went beautifully well, in spite of the 33 degree (that's 90+ Fahrenheit) temperatures. Even our garden, chocked full of tender seedlings, weathered the miniature heatwave well. We were so pleased!

Christmas and Boxing Day, themselves, were delightful and filled with more food than anyone should eat in a lifetime. The City Mouse will have to resume her health regime in earnest, post-renovations, to recapture a smidge of lost weight gained over the festivals of food. We did have one adorable companion over Christmas lunch in the form of a fuzzy little Koala, curled up in the cradle of a gum tree just a few steps from our outdoor locale. It was a beautiful sight.

The barrage of home improvements still dominates our every waking moment, but the end is drawing near. Today we pick up a handy-dandy floor sander and begin the process of refinishing our floors. It's daunting, as there are layers of thick, black goo across some of the flooring, but we hold faith that all will glow a beautiful, piny hue when we are done. This new phase of our mad dash toward increased home value means that we will be taking full advantage of the outdoors, this week, with plans to camp out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, allowing our floors to dry.

Some of the first real harvest has come in from the garden, lending itself to our delicious dinner of green beans and potatoes cooked with ham hock. How else could one serve such a southern treat than with sweet honey cornbread and big glasses of minted iced tea? It was delightful!

During our backyard camp fest, we intend to use up some of the early tomatoes, a few more beans, and hopefully a green pepper or two. I think what I'm looking forward to, most of all, is a camp breakfast of stewed, fresh apricots from our tree. One sunset colored beauty found its way into yesterday's snack time and the harvest promises to be sweetly perfect.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the thoughtful array of gifts we received, this fine holiday, with American treats sent from home, fabulous project books for the hubby and a Ball Home Preserving superbook for yours truly. There were vacuums and shoes, gift cards, seedlings, and bakeware, plus some lovely donations toward our future rainwater tank.

Our own gifts to the relatives were made on a shoestring, consisting mostly of photographs the hubby and I have taken over the last year, packaged for friends and family in envelopes decorated with scrapbooking supplies and sent with much love. Hopefully next year we will be enjoying our holiday in cooler American climes, instead of taking a dip in the pool. Though a good swim is never a bad thing!

Perhaps the biggest gift has come wrapped in another gift all its own. Our present to each other was, of course, our beautiful pup, Laney. But she too had a bit of giving to do and just three weeks after her adoption, she decided to let us in on a bit of a secret. She's pregnant! Yep, that's right. We adopted ourselves a pregnant dog. We estimate her to be in week seven with two to go until these new little critters join our family. We will be keeping one pup and giving the rest away. An inconvenient gift, but one we are growing to love.

For now, we are off for a day of pulling up carpets and sanding down floors. It will be several days before we have net access again, and "vacation" begins January 6th. From that date on, this suburban plotter will be gleefully returning to frequent updates and big news of harvests and kitchen doings. Until then, be well and happy and enjoy your New Year!

Comforts, Chaos, and Serendipity in a Can

The mania of remodeling, renewing, and refurbishing continues on the Suburban Plot, holidays notwithstanding. The stack of dramatic before-and-afters piles higher with every day and, still, the To Do List remains chocked full of fun for the whole family.

There was a fair bit of good fortune involved in this weekend's tasks. You see, more than six months ago, even before our wedding, the husband and I chose a medley of colors for the kitchen-dining-living wing of our little house. Each room bleeds into the next, so we were particularly mindful of the visual harmony of all three paints. For half a year those paint chips have remained taped to our dining room wall, never forgotten but financially out of reach, for paint seems an absolute luxury when one is budgeting for sufficient groceries.

Then a miracle occurred. A genuine miracle of interior design. An intervention of divine decoration! When mixed in proper proportions, two spare cans of paint, one left over from hubby's workplace, another the bare remainders of our hallway work last fall, these two colors blended to a nearly perfect match of our little golden kitchen paint chip! And thus, Kitchen Phase 2 was begun.

I swear, if we get much luckier, I might collapse. The To Do List has become our holy book, its happy little ticky-marks our mitzvahs and commandments done well, its unchecked items our sins and transgressions. Oh yes...we know when we're licked. We are resigned to two more weeks of slavish work and keep only the hopeful results of home inspection and the promised month of break from any home improvement as our beacons of salvation off in the distance.

Amidst the plaster dust and paint fumes, a girl sometimes finds herself in need of the comforts of quieter times gone by, and the City Mouse had a serious hankering for a big, steamy bowl of Chicken and Dumplins. That gooey southern dish just can't be beat for full-on innards-warming grub that lands in the tummy like a load of bricks.

I've struggled, since my immigration, with duplicating the chemical goodness of the Bisquick dumpling and came a step closer, Saturday night, with a baking soda biscuit recipe, homemade chicken stock, and some boneless thigh meat. I still need to find a way to make the dumplings a little less dense and a smidge more breaddy. Experimentation will win out!

But for now, this home renovator must obey her paint can masters and return to the brush for another day of first and second coats, and yet another "after shot" for the stack. I apologize for the delay between posts but, as you can tell, time is a precious commodity these days. Soon, your daily updates will return!

Sweet Green Southern-Fried Pride

Few things scream Deep South like the mild tang of green tomatoes. Other cultures dabble in the land of the un-reddened, unripened fruit, but Southerners embrace it with big, wide, opened arms. With the pending harvest of dozens taunting us in its tempting green state, this Southern American girl caved and cooked up a couple green tomato delights, this week, thanks to the enormous third-of-a-kilo greenies we plucked.

Lamb for Two, Over Sweet Pasta Verde
A small handful of raisins (sultanas)
A fair splash of Verjus or a mix of light fruit juice (white grape, apple, etc), lemon juice, and a drop or two of white wine vinegar, for plumping the raisins
1 large green tomato, diced
1 spring onion, finely sliced
1/2 cup fresh or frozen peas
Sugar, salt, and pepper, to taste
2 servings of your favorite pasta
Olive oil
2 sprigs fresh basil
1 sprig fresh mint
2 servings of roasted, rested lamb (sea salt, minced rosemary, fresh pepper, garlic, and olive oil rubbed over lamb roast and cooked "low-and-slow" at 170C/330F until desired doneness)

Stir raisins into verjus or fruit juice mixture and cook over low heat until the raisins have plumped. Set aside, reserving the juice.

While your raisins are busy plumping, chop, slice and dice the green tomato, spring onion, and herbs. Toss the tomato and onion into a medium-hot pan and saute gently, re-adding the raisins and liquid in once the onions become translucent. Cover and simmer while setting your pasta to boil.

Drain the pasta and keep warm with a lid, drizzling with just a touch of olive oil to prevent clumping, stirring the chopped basil and mint in with the pasta as it cools.

Uncover the green tomato sauce, seasoning to taste with dashes of salt, pepper, and sugar until it makes you swoon, reducing the liquid to intensify flavors. If you have some pan drippings from your roast, add these to the sauce judiciously, as they may be very oily. Stir in the peas and warm through.

Stir together pasta and sauce and arrange in the center of each plate. Lay a few slices of warm, medium-rare to medium lamb over top the pasta and serve. If you aren't a fan of lamb, this recipe would work beautifully with nearly any meat you can imagine, or alone as a summery vegan dish.

Oh, and if you still have a few slices of green tomato left over...whip up a real Southern, down-home meal with some fried green tomatoes. Here's my quick recipe for this crispy, tart treat.

For a crunchy, tasty tomato, start with some chicken. Don't laugh! I'm serious. Get together a few drumsticks, wings, breasts, whatever you like, some good frying oil and a deep pot. Heat the oil while you mix up some self-raising flour, salt, lemon pepper, cayenne, oregano, marjoram, and whatever else makes you smile. In a second bowl, whisk together egg and a splash of milk.

Once the oil is hot enough to sizzle, but not enough to smoke, dredge each piece of chicken in the egg wash, then into the flour mixture, shaking off all excess. Re-dip into the wash, then again into the flour, then (with long tongs!) lay gently into your hot oil, being careful not to overcrowd.

While the chicken fries, soak sliced green tomato in the egg and milk wash. Add a good sprinkling of cornmeal or fine polenta to the flour mixture, and a little extra salt.

Remove the chicken and set to drain over paper towels, covered loosely with a piece of foil or a warming lid, then double-dip those beautiful green tomato slices just like you did with the chicken. Fry them in the same oil, making sure to evenly brown both sides. Drain and serve with some cool sliced beets, a big pile of steamed peas and carrots, and a tall glass of sweet iced tea, cryin' out "Oooo Lawdy," as you dive into these Dixie dishes.

Lining 'em Up and Knocking 'em Down

Scrape and patch, plaster, sand, and paint. That is the rhythm of the week. Another dragon in the forest of Phase 1 Re-dos has been slain! What once was a dingy, lumpy, bumpy bathroom with pink marbled tiles and a blue tub and basin, is now smooth, cool, and blue...with pink marbled tiles and a blue tub and basin. But, that's why it's called Phase 1.

Hubby dutifully smoothed out the walls, getting rid of all cracks and crevices. My task was to take what's old and make it new, rolling on the free blue that falls somewhere between Robins Egg and Seafoam in the Crayola spectrum. It's not a color we'd have chosen for ourselves, but who are we to judge free paint? No one! That's who.

If only that were some kind of final point in our efforts, but nay, the husband has already begun scraping our horror of a toilet, with the laundry to follow soon behind. Eventually Phase 2 of many projects will commence, with paint for the kitchen, and either a re-tiling or repainting of existing bathroom tiles, then finally a terrazzo floor resurfacing, if we can figure out just how one can do that.

I'm pretty happy with the "Green" theme of our renovations. While we're not using soy-based paints or chemical-free anything, we are using second hand products that might've otherwise found their way into landfills. Unwanted paints and cabinets are our best friends in this penny-pinching endeavor and, thus far, the results are looking damn fine to me!