New Watercolor Book

 Good afternoon Saturday,

    Perfect weather today, not too hot or humid. I cut some grass this morning. I just do one of the large batteries at a time to keep my back from aching too much.  Yesterday I finally got the chest freezer emptied and cleaned. This is an old one, so it ice's up fairly fast on me with the bad seal. I have no clue how to change a seal. This was so needed to get done as I kept putting it off-now I know how much meat I have in there and the newer meat is now on the bottom so I can use up the 2024 meat.

   I wanted to share a new watercolor book I just ordered-and I found a spiral-which will be soooo much nicer to use.  I really want to try painting again so am hoping this will help me This is wildflowers and herbs.

  I also found a video where the person sharing this book-flips though some of the pages  find here

  I also found her online site and she is on Instagram-here is a slide show of her book

    Hubby will be really sore tomorrow morning or even tonight but I know he felt good getting out to use one of his pieces of heavy equipment. One of our workers came out today to work on the walk way on the side of the house-out the basement door-down to the lake.  There were two large tree stumps that needed to come out.  This property is also built on solid rock, so it is quite the task to get posts dug deep enough for the hand railing that is getting built-Larry's goal is to be able to get on the dock to fish or even into his boat. Not sure about the boat but won't discourage him

   I made us biscuits and gravy yesterday-always a good treat.

  Enjoy your weekend!!

We Have Been Chilly with Rain & Fish Cookbooks

   We will be gradually warming up this week. Our home has been quite chilly-If the woodstove set up would have been repaired I would have started a fire to take the chill out. I am refusing to turn the heat back on-smiles.

   I did bake up chocolate chip cookies for Larry yesterday and made a batch for me gluten free and white chocolate chips (acid reflux friendly chocolate for me) A nice treat

  I got lots of mail in my mailbox today including two of the fish cookbooks I found on Ebay. They were both packed with care  These two were all about salmon.

 Photos taken off the Ebay listings The seller had a rather high price on this one-it was vintage, and in like new condition-he did take my lower price offer. This cat motif was inspired from the author's own cat-and was featured for each chapter. I scanned the recipes a bit tonight-and found some I want to try.

   Note: photos will enlarge for better viewing

The book was printed in the USA  and here was the dedication to the author's cat

  This next book will read like a book. I thought it looked interesting along with the recipes. I searched around the internet  for the best price-as this one the price was low to high.. I took extra time on Ebay and found this copy-- like brand new for around $6.00 free shipping  A beautiful book that I will enjoy reading  These two were fishing on their boat so the book is a lot about their adventures.

I also bought this book that I have not received yet This one has recipes for lots of different fish in Alaska  

  Sharing the description of the book below and  this one was published in 1995.  This book looked like a good read as well  Found on Ebay -very good condition, around $9.00 free shipping, much less than Amazon's price   

Product Information

""The Alaska Heritage Seafood Cookbook"" pays tribute to one of Alaska's great resources and brings the state's proud past to the table. This collection includes traditional and contemporary recipes, tips on cooking, buying, and preparing seafood, fascinating Alaska legend and lore, sources for obtaining fish by mail order, a complete glossary of species, suggested menus and 150 recipes. 50 b&w photos, 1 map.

Table of contents-a lot of these fish listed can be in my fish box Found this on Amazon's listing

   So I think I will get some new ideas for cooking my fish. I can work around ingredients that my stomach won't like. Larry is not big on eating fish unless I bread and fry it.  So going forward foods that are no longer in my diet right now I will prepare for Larry and make me a fish meal.

  Always good to learn new things.  and speaking about fish books:  The fish company I shared about sent out a post that they are releasing their first cookbook this year November. It was fairly costly but if one pre orders they will give you back $25.00 off your next fish box-so I went ahead and ordered it-as I like their recipes that I have seen on their you tube videos. 

      I am going from no fish cookbooks in my library to several fish cookbooks. 

 Hoping we will be a bit warmer and drier tomorrow so I can get  back to working outdoors .again.

 Enjoy the rest of your week!!

Do You Buy Organics?

     Good afternoon, we got some much needed rain last night, chilly today but the boats are getting on the lake now (around 12:30 pm) A bit windy too with no sunshine. Lots of rain still forecast for tomorrow and Monday.

   Our two workers came and got more accomplished yesterday, and I got more accomplished too in the flower garden. I have everything I need now to set up the ornamental grasses on a mound of soil near the lake front. I will work on that once the rain all clears out.  That big mound is full of weeds too that need to be cleared.  This was a project Larry wanted to do to hopefully bring in nesting ducks or geese.

    I have been purchasing an assortment  of what I thought was quality dried fruits from an online family company for years now. Larry always liked it and actually requested dried fruit probably 15 years ago or more, so I buy a big box of different dried fruits and then put a small assortment in snack bags and store in the frig.  These dried fruits have gotten more expensive the last few years,  The fruits have always been large and a quality product.  I started eating some too for a healthy snack and helps with digestion for me as well.

  I had not really looked at all the ingredients, I just assumed just dried fruit-Not. There is no added sugars but they do use sulfur and other preservatives and the bad thing for me-not packaged in an allergy friendly place-the list is long-wheat-fish -dairy and more. I am thinking they just want to cover everything.  Since my digestive system is pretty touchy still-this dried fruit product is not for me-sadly. I don't know why I hadn't really looked into this before. I had always been happy with their products and supporting a family business as well.

 So I looked online for organic and allergy free dried fruits. I ended up going to Amazon to see what they had. I found a company that had dates, figs, apricots, and tart cherries  mostly in 2 1/2 pound bags, a couple in 2 pound bags for just about the same price that I have been spending for one pound bags. Wow it pays to shop around.  I also found organic Sun maid raisins in a large bag too  I need to search for a yellow raisin that doesn't have the sulfur preservatives. Maybe that is what keeps them yellow.

  Here is a photo of what I found on Amazon

 I have noticed that our small size Wal mart store has organics coming in more than before.

  I Have 3 pieces of frozen fish from the first company I bought from-wow such a huge difference in portion size than the new company  The two salmons that were left are thin and small It does pay to shop around.

   Enjoy your weekend

Update: I have been searching online for golden raisins that are organic or at least with no sulfur. I did not find much at all with no sulfur.  I did come across something new to me, had good reviews organic and no sulfur added  Goldenberries Most seem to be grown in Peru

Fish Box Arrived-Photos

   I needed to go to the dentist early this morning for a cavity that was found deep in the bottom right side of  a crown. I asked him about that if this was unusual-and he said it was from acid reflux-Wow. I told him about what I was going through-and he said since I am not a medical doctor I can not say anything about this unless the patient brings it up in conversation.  Told me when I was sleeping on my right side (my usual side) the cavity formed then.  That was at 9 am and it is now 1:30 pm as I write this and that side is still totally numb along with most of my tongue. (Note: we eat our main meal at 2 pm and after I ate the numbness is finally almost gone.)

   I had other errands to do along with stopping at the local grocery store for fresh items and a few other things.  As I was bringing things down into the house the UPS man came with my fish box-Perfect timing indeed, since Larry can not answer the door. I had left the front door open with a note to put the box just inside the house-so it wouldn't be in the sun.  It worked out perfect.

  I took some photos-and am very impressed with this company. Better packaging materials-dry ice, and compostable packing- than the first company I tried. All the fish is sooooo much nicer and larger than from the other company too.

   I contacted the company to let them know I was so happy with my fish and also to change my next order from July to August. This company makes it so easy to change up what is in your box and when you want it or don't want it.   I haven't worked with a company in a long time that is so friendly and hands on.  She also referred me to their Facebook page that shares recipes.

I took photos front and back of the fish, but the photos did not load in order - sigh-so just showing the fronts with the labels

Here is a photo where you can see the sizes-generous size for sure some of these will give me two servings

      Larry likes to go fishing but Not eat the fish He will eat a fish fry though-I found an excellent batter that works well with gluten free-but I rarely fry and can't now with the acid reflux

 Below back of one of the salmons

This is ground salmon-I never had this before

This last one is in chunks for chowder-so looking forward to a recipe-I love fish chowders-do you have a favorite recipe??

      Now I will look forward to seeing those used Alaska fish cookbooks I ordered on ebay pop into my mailbox-that will be fun. 

   Years ago I used to read cookbooks-like a regular book.  I had sooooo many cookbooks several 100 I had to sell most of them when I retired and we moved down to Missouri-and downgraded again when we moved to the lake.

   Our two workers are coming back tomorrow to work for us. I have soooo much outdoor work to do-hoping I will feel better and can get  more accomplished-forecast is telling us Lots of rain saturday-sunday and monday.

  Happy Friday and long weekend for those of you in the States-as we honor our fallen for Memorial Day

Fish Box in the Mail

   Good morning Monday,

     We did have storms last night but I didn't hear them-which is unusual for me Early this evening very bad storms are forecast-hail tornadoes etc-these storms seem to be stuck in this midwest  region still. We have missed the worst of it so far-so hoping that continues.

   Do any of you buy meat or fish packages that come in the mail?? This is a new concept for me, so thought I would try one.  We live rural so not a lot of food store options within 30 minutes. I don't want or need to drive over an hour to a larger city-ugh. It would be mostly 4lane highway as well another ugh haha

    I looked at Good Ranchers and if you want organic grass fed beef this looked really good, but I tried out their fish box instead. I was a vegetarian for many years in my younger days and afterwards I still do not eat a lot of red meats-I did really enjoy the deer brought in at hunting season at the woods house though-very lean meat.

   I did not care for some of the fish in my box-I like cod but not theirs-very thin filet with skin on-so not much fish at all. I never had halibut and I really liked that and the salmon, and their shrimp too. My box also had two free pounds of grass fed hamburger which I appreciated as that is what I buy at the store for hamburger.

   I did not like that the sizes and weights of the fish were all over the place in each package-they were just going for total weight I think. Larry loves to fish but he is not much of a fish eater.  My new diet right now is so restricted especially having to eliminate tomato sauces and anything acidic that I am wanting to eat more fish-and try new fish that I have not had before. (I am finally feeling better but have lost a lot of weight-for me-8  pounds now-so I am back to my younger days weight around 116 which is ok but don't want to lose more)

  Soooo around Friday evening I started searching online for just fish boxes. The site that I was impressed with was Wild Alaskan Company   An excellent site too full of information about the fish, they have a blog with recipes, special boxes for members-I thought their prices were very good too.  I would not want to pay the prices for their crab legs etc but I didn't know those were so expensive. 

    So I have a Facebook friend that we were chatting about things and she told me she has been buying from this company for several years now and has loved everything.  I had some questions about some of these ocean fish that I was not familiar with so I contacted them, and told him about my friend. He says then tell her to refer you to us and you will each get $50.00 off your next box.  Awesome! So since I saved $50.00 I spent $25.00 for their ground salmon-anxious to check out recipes for that-any suggestions??  I love salmon always have. Shipping is free which is a big plus.

   So I went with their wild combo fish box that has a long list of fish that could be in the box. I have it set up ight now for every 2 months-but you can easily skip a box til a future month of your choice. They have really good communication so far as well

Here is the fish list that could be included for the wild combo box I am getting the smaller box of 12 pieces. The fish with the stars may not be available for where you live-these are all available where I am 

Wild Combo Box

• 12 or 24 individual 6 oz. portions of wild-caught seafood
• 100% money-back guarantee
• Skip or cancel anytime

Contents can change week-to-week based on availability. Shipping now:

• Coho Salmon
• Pacific Cod
• Pacific Halibut
• Sockeye Salmon
• Pacific Rockfish
• Wild Alaska Pollock *
• Sablefish *
• Lingcod *
• Sockeye Salmon Burgers *
• And More!

 The fish are all wild caught ocean fish, I am excited to try the fish I am not familiar with  

I found this video from the Founder of the company 

The choices available for foods these days is pretty nice for one living so rural

  Have a good week

  Update-I wanted to drop a note if anyone wants to try out a box contact me on my contact form here on my blog with your name and email and I can refer you to the company-we each get $50.00 off one box order--that is pretty nice of them.

Working in the Garden-Lots of Photos

    Good afternoon, we are humid and hot here in Missouri. Mid 80's with high humidity and this area of Missouri being closer to the sun (than I am used to living on upper Illinois-Wisconsin border) Is very hot for me-I think more so being a senior now.

   So I am out early, usually 7:30 -8 am after most of the dew is off and Larry is set up for his day. I have most of the grass cut now-the tallest for sure, so I think one more large battery will finish it up-before I have to start again. If I keep at it-takes me a week to get it all done.

  I bought  bags of soil last week, the guys when they were here brought it all down for me-so I worked on that the last couple of days-trying to get the gardens sorted out and looking better. It was a lost cause last year.

  I am going to need more garden soil so I called and Wal mart's generic is sold out in the large bags but they ordered 100 more bags coming in tomorrow-that will go fast. I will call tomorrow afternoon to see if it came in. I always have loved Miracle Grow but their prices have been outrageous the last couple of years, so I have been using Wal marts generic brand It is on sale now too for around $5.00 Hoping I can get some more this weekend.

  I needed to get some of the flowers out of the growing bottles since we are hot now-the stems are pretty thin-sadly and those chipmunks dug up a bunch after I worked yesterday-ugh. Hoping they will make it. I grew snapdragons, salvia, and dwarf petunias that needed planting.

    This first photo-iris's we brought from the woods house, and the lilies were from my Mom's garden-they are settling in this year at the lake

One of the pots the chipmunks dug out

The three pots  below and an old rusty sewing machine head. At the woods house many years ago a friend knew I sewed a lot so he brought me two of these and thought I would like them in the garden-I dragged them here to the lake  These three stone pots were here when we bought the property

Garage sale fine, that I brought along. Once the butterflies start coming I like to have shallow water spots for them I love the wild violets so I never dig them out

This pot has ornamental grasses we grew from little plants-I have a spot for them near the lake. The tall ones we grew last year-I bought a couple varigated this year, but they are growing very slowly so far. Hope to get this set up over the weekend.

Another look at my Mom's lilies

  We bought two of these large leaf pans years ago at a garage sale The plants are milkweed I grew from seed last year

Next is the photo of the pad the guys set up for the lift-they are booked up now, so hoping a lot of time does not go by before they can work on this more

I will close with this pretty color-just have one of these  I will be keeping at this project to get things sorted out and looking nicer. Plus it gets me outdoors for a bit too.

Happy Friday and weekend dear Friends

New Recipe-Almond Flour Cookies

After cutting a lot more grass,  I decided  to bake up a batch of almond flour cookies. I have not baked with almond flour as the only flour in the recipe. Almond flour is a very safe food for acid reflux. I changed the chocolate chips to white chocolate chips which is also a safe food.  Butter is not on my list, but I bake with coconut oil mostly for me anyways.

  Here is the recipe I followed but I doubled the recipe. The author made huge cookies and only got 10 cookies from her recipe-I doubled the recipe, made smaller cookies and got 36 cookies-not a lot of cookies for 3 cups of almond flour though. I also lowered the bake time to 9 minutes which was perfect.

    These turned out really good  so I will make them again. I have enough that I can freeze most of them too.

      This first photo are balls of dough that I pressed down. The recipe also says they don't rise much or spread out-they did rise a bit for me

You can see that when they bake they don't change as much as regular cookies when they bake

 

   I am exploring new recipes for this acid reflux condition I am dealing with, which is finally getting better,

 

    We have humidity and warmer temperatures-in the 80's this week. I needed to break down and turn the a/c on for us-set at 79 

Surprise Blooms

   This was so exciting to discover when I went out to cut grass to the right of the dock. I went back into the house and grabbed the camera so Larry could see them.

    . I think it was two years ago possibly 3 that we bought Japanese water iris  plants from an Ebay seller. That year I think I bought these in the fall. I lost over half of these do to the waves. You insert these into cracks in the rocks in our situation here at the lake-otherwise if you have a pond you plant them along the water's edge-they like and need water.  The water is still not full yet either-will be up level by Memorial Day.

  We had also bought yellow ones but I have lost all of those-I just ordered another set of 4 plants this morning.

The next photo are water iris's that we brought from our pond at the woods house-these plants will really spread too.

 And sadly the peonies are to the left of this photo-I lost one of the pink ones that was closest to the lake-it must have gotten too much water-it was there last year for sure.  That was a bummer, must have lost it over the winter.

  When I was working in the front a few days ago to the left of the steps-I discovered another surprise. 

   When we first moved here I dug up my very old lavender plant-I just did not want to leave it all alone.  I got several years of lavender stems since moving it here to the lake-Cleaning out that area I discovered that I lost it this past winter as well. However a seed must have planted itself  into a space in the rock wall. This is the tiniest of cracks too so the roots must have found some soil past the rocks. Will be fun to see how this grows.

  I am also asking for prayers  for my husband-he is doing very very poorly today

Working on Projects

   We had the perfect day today for pouring concrete. We are getting closer to getting Larry out of the house-easier and hopefully less pain.

  It is amazing how very expensive and really out of reach to buy those chairs that go up and down stairs or to buy a lift. My husband always looks for used and then repurposes them.  It has been over a year now that Larry found a used lift-new was over 20 thousand. It was out of state our friend picked it up, but the seller did not tell the truth about the condition of this lift.  Larry figured out how to re work it, bought a few new parts. Hoping this will work well with no issues.  Thought I could also use it to help get groceries down the steps.

   Today we had the perfect weather for pouring the concrete. Once in place and working they will need to build some sort of railing to get on and off the lift easily and safely. This is the wall that he tumbled off of a year and half ago..

   

This worked out really well-mixing the concrete and dumping off the top. I forgot to go back and take a photo of the finish-as I was making everyone a lunch.  Rain was not too far away from us-but thankfully it moved on. 

  I think they are gong to change the direction of the gate so it opens up facing the lift.

While the guys were working on that project I got a lot more grass cut today. I was cutting the area to the left looking out towards the lake-that grows slower than the rest of the yard.  The area that I have already cut 3 times needs to be cut again.. More weeding to do on the left of these photos and then spread out large bags of soil.  After that back to tackling the mint issue.  I do feel good getting a lot more grass cut.

    This is the first year that I really feel like a senior though (I had to look it up-haha I am 75 now and will be 76 on October.  I have never really paid attention to my age much-except for milestone ages. I forgot about turning 75 last year

   Looks like my area will be jumping into the mid 80's F rest of the week-so I will go out early in the day to work.

  My peony bushes are blooming now. I brought 5 bushes over to the lake house. Four are down by the lake on the property line to the left, and I have one up by the house to the left of the stairs. These have traveled with us-they were from my Grandma's garden and I have always taken a few plants with me over the past 40 plus years when ever we moved.  They are settled in now and happy where they are again. The neighbor here also has peony bushes same colors too.

  Here is a photo from last year or perhaps the year before. These are more filled out now too

 You can see that the lake is still low-this is a man made lake and it's purpose was to  make electricity for the area and also recreation.. They will raise it up by Memorial Day and the lake will be up even with the grass.

   We have a full moon tonight too-it is peaking through the trees over the lake here-pretty

   Happy mid week everyone.

Happy Mother's Day & Weekend

   Good Moring Friday

   Have any of you made a white sauce for pizza instead of the tomato based sauce?  I have a taste for homemade pizza but I need to stick to my new diet which includes no tomato foods.

  I looked around on the internet and found one that looked pretty good but thought I would ask you all if you ever made this?

   We had our workers for a couple days this week so I went into Wal Mart yesterday early to buy large bags of soil for the ground and to fill up my big tubs.  There is no way I could get those down the hill and steps this year-and they picked up two bags each and carried them down-Wow I was amazed by that. They were heavier too I think with all the rain we have had.  I got lucky too as they had what I needed on sale.  Bought 3 cubic feet bags for the tubs and 6 of the 2 cu feet bags of garden soil  The check out person said when I bought it that the soil was selling like hot cakes this week haha

  I am still recovering from an aching back ugh-but I don't need to pick these up-just shovel right our of the bags. I went to work this week digging out weeds to the left of the steps, I want to finish that today and hopefully work with this soil today. After this hope to tackle that mint and cut grass-again-over the weekend.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers

                        

Started Digging Up the Mint

  Late this afternoon, I grabbed the old carpet piece I use to sit on the ground and my little short handle shovel-I noticed that a lot of my perennials are still there amongst all that mint-That had me smiling. When we had that water leak from our well up above the rock wall-it flooded this area most of last summer.  So I am surprised my plants survived. Most all of these perennials I grew from seeds.

  I had planted different varieties of milkweed, and bee balm and others.  Since we have had so much rain this area is easy to dig up-so I worked on digging mint away from these plants. I hear thunder as I am typing this tonight-so I guess we are in for more rain. I had thought it was moving on but guess not, more rain tomorrow night as well

  I grabbed the camera

   The two plants to the right still had the marker-milkweed plants. I love the wild violets here so after digging up the mint in this area I replanted the violets-in the middle. 

This next photo is just to the left of above that includes those wild violets.  There is a perennial in the photo to the left that I don't know what it is  all that green is mint-it is that thick everywhere 

This next photo is a little more to the left again-you can really see all that mint-ugh-and you can see the shallots. These were brought back many many years ago from Larry's grandfather's visit to Israel. When ever we moved we brought them with us.  They did not do well at the woods house but they love it here have multiplied quite a bit this past year-perhaps from all that water.

  Those panels in the back are parts to a lift for Larry to avoid the steps-hoping we can get that done soon.  There are a lot of iris's getting ready to bloom a long the rock wall

    Below is our patch of shallots-so happy these spread. I will work on getting the mint out of this area next.  There is another perennial in the front left corner. I won't know what these are until they bloom. These were all planted to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and bees.

This is another photo in the area of the first photo-you can see this old stump-that holds that very large copper pot. A bunch of perennials in this area too that I don't remember what they are. That spiky plant to the right in front may be a yucca-if it is I will dig it out. For some reason many people plant these yuccas-and they spread like crazy-I don't like them-and I just noticed it here in this photo. Our neighbor has a bunch of them so they plant themselves in the area.

  The photos will enlarge-just click on them.

Well, I am off to read a little bit while listening to the rain storm coming through

Happy First Day of May

   I am happy that May has arrived. Soooo -- Happy May.

       I hadn't realized that May 1st is May Day for the European labor unions. The US does not celebrate at least if they do I am not familiar. When I worked for the phone co we pretty much had to be part of the union there but no celebration for May Day.

   We have had Lots of rain here, some flooding of rivers in Missouri. Today looks like mostly cloudy skies but not a lot of rain chances-a good thing for now.  I am hoping to get outdoors later this afternoon to pull some weeds and dig up unwanted mini oak trees that grow quite rapidly.

  I have a major problem with over run mint as well-from the too much water from our well last year.-I don't want to use a chemical as the  mint is growing around other perennials.  I may dig and pull an area and then cover with plastic or something to try and kill the roots-this will be a huge job-ugh.

  Enjoy your first day of May!