Let’s Go Rain

So we’ve been praying for rain, and yesterday we got it. Let’s Go Rain. Also had been singing Soft Boy’s Mr. Kennedy because in addition to rain it also mentions Pittsburgh. So, love. ♥ Not sure about Pittsburgh giving the synagogue shooter the death penalty, though.

On the TV news last night they said 1.68 inches.

Unfortunately, here at my house, we’re at a point in the screen porch construction where the addition has no roof. Even though the guys tarped everything it leaked yesterday afternoon. And then the basement started leaking too. The construction guys have to clean up the addition, but I had to sop up the basement last night, and even though my knee felt great all day yesterday, last night while I was watching the news it started to stiff up and today I am noticeably limping. I skipped the food pantry this AM and am now waiting for the construction job project manager to stop by so I can show him the wet spots in the ceiling of my room. It also oddly leaked in the unfinished crawl space under the addition, too. We think – because the gutters & downspouts have been removed for the construction – that the water probably ran down the side of the house and in through the ground.

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But everything will get sorted – as the PM says – and is starting to dry out.

Meanwhile I’m trying to get the fridge cleared out in preparation for us going to meet Rowan next week. Here’s a recent pic – he is just over four weeks old now.

And Jasper will be 8 months next week. We had a pretty good day Tuesday. He is so trying to crawl or move. He gets his knees under him but can’t quite figure out the arms, although he can lie on his belly and spin himself to reach things. So he wasn’t too happy in most of his chairs – too confining. We mostly played on the floor. And we did go outside and swing for a bit, but I didn’t take any pictures. Emma put him at the toy piano Grandpa Steve gave him, and I took some pictures then took my turn being the chair back.

I’m not doing too badly at trying to insure there’s no food waste. I thought CSA recipes would feature broccoli this week, but instead it was collards and beets. Monday’s dinner was huevos rancheros, so the only thing from the vegetable drawer that used up was some cilantro and a couple of chiles. And the really good refried beans I made last week, with bacon fat. I really liked this sauce recipe and happily there’s a carton in the freezer now for future. Tuesday I stopped at the co-op on the way home after Jasper and and bought dill and beets and made cucumber beet salad based on Julia Turshen for my original CSA recipe for the week.

And I blanched the broccoli and made dill dip and it was veggies & dip and sandwiches (and some of the beet salad for me) for dinner. So that used up the deli ham and some of the broccoli and carrots and peapods in the fridge.

On rainy Wednesday night I made clean out the veggie drawer fried rice and a batch of veggie stock with all the herbs and etc. I had – that worked well, and I think Al will eat the leftover fried rice if I take it over there Friday.

I’ll get my CSA box this afternoon, and I think we’ll have pasta with basil-broccoli pesto, kind of what I was planning to make when I thought broccoli was going to be the highlight of the box. I was going to do a kind of double broccoli pasta salad, kind of like this Heidi recipe (it’s actually Orzo Salad in Super Natural Every Day), the main idea being that you cook broccoli and make some of it into a pesto and use it to dress the salad, and leave some of it florets and mix it in. Since we are getting a whole bunch of basil in this week’s box, I’m going to make it a basil-broccoli pesto, and serve it hot. And make the couple of ends of bread in the fridge into garlic toast; a few slices of Nigella’s sandwich white, and one of the 4th of July burger buns. And clean all the lettuce from last Saturday’s Farmer’s Market and we’ll eat what we can and I’ll give the rest to Al & Emma.

I wrote up the basil-broccoli pesto recipe and here it is. It stays green!

I think that will hold everything I have and everything I’m getting OK until we get back from seeing Rowan. I know there’s going to be cucumbers and zucchini and collards but all of those will keep in the fridge for a week.

And of course the beets but those will keep even longer. For CSA, I wrote about beets and eggs and pickling them but I think I can safely get to those when we’re back.

And oh yea, I also made blueberry cornmeal muffins on rainy Wednesday. I’d grabbed a bag of organic cornmeal at the pantry that afternoon – right before Mark called me to tell me the roof was leaking – and seemed only fair to make some of it into muffins to take to share with volunteers. But I skipped my Thursday morning shift because my knee hurt too much. Still, the muffins are safely in the freezer now, for the next time.

And I had one for breakfast.