3/18/24

Avocados and Temecula

Good afternoon, my friends. We've had a leisurely morning and an outing already today. In about an hour, we'll head over to the home of some friends for a nice dinner. My contribution is this Orange Upside-Down Cake. 


This was originally a test recipe from America's Test Kitchens. Sometimes I make this as a cake for two, but this is the full meal deal. I've figured out I can post recipes from the Paprika app if I first convert them to black and white. This one still seems a little small. Where the salt is listed under the ingredients, that's 5/8 teaspoon, divided. The rest looks readable, but if you prefer, email me, and I'll send it to you in a different format.


The cake was a special request from the man of the house on wheels. 

After that, we headed north again to pick up some more avocados. They'll be the last ones from this visit. As we were leaving, I noticed Sadie was having a purrfectly wonderful morning nap. Please do not disturb.


After picking up the avocados, I wanted to go to Temecula. On our several past visits, we've gone to a particular place, and I really wanted to just walk up and down the main street in Old Town. I love these old buildings. This one is Baily's.


I'm not sure about this one, but it housed a couple of dress shops. (I'm afraid my dress-shopping days are over.)


This next one was the Penfold Building. I checked for any historical information about these buildings, but didn't find anything.


We had lunch at the 1909 Cafe located in this building.


Mike's burger bun had the name of the cafe branded into it.


I was being beckoned by the hostess when I snapped this next picture. I wish I'd taken a little more time with it. It says "Wine Country" at the top, and I think you can see the rest of it pretty well. It was a manhole-sized inlay in the sidewalk.


While we ate our lunch, I noticed this "Painted Garden" shop across the street. We took a stroll through to see their many colorful items for sale. Most everything you see in color in these next images is made of metal, but there were also scads of succulents for sale.


This next image is so busy, I didn't think you'd be able to pick out the subject. I've circled it in the middle. It was a peacock that behaved like one of those tippy birds. It tipped forward and rocked backward. This was the largest one, but they came in two smaller sizes as well. 


I just loved all the color in here.



Look at the front of the table here, and you'll see some sculptures of ants engaged in different activities.




I was smitten with these cats, but the last thing we need is a huge and heavy "rock" to carry around.



Next door was the Mercantile. And look at that!


Inside, I liked this tea towel. I believe I crossed this boundary several cats ago.


I loved these tags for gifts of wine. The one in the upper right was especially good for Thanksgiving.


Before leaving, I purchased the first refrigerator magnet of the trip. They also had shot glasses, but they were not the shape of the ones I collect. Bummer. Oh well. A magnet is better than nothing.


So, I must be on my way. Dinner with friends awaits. If you've enjoyed reading this post, you can thank Smitty for his careful editing.


Oh yes, and I can't finish without showing you this game of inside-outside. The kitties take turns in the Catio. Sometimes one waits while the other hogs the whole thing. This time it's Sadie inside, Smitty outside. Sometimes it goes the other way.


Okay...gotta go. Have a good evening, everybody!

3/17/24

Starlink is Back!

Hooray! Our Starlink connection is up and running again. Mike is convinced the problem we've had with ours was simply a fluke. Many, many, many RVers are using Starlink without problems, and so we think we just got a defective dish. They sent us a complete new system. Mike hooked it up with our old dish, and it still didn't work. When he switched to the new dish...magic! And I'm not kidding about the magic. I gave up trying to understand how things work back in the mid-70's when FAX machines first became widely available. Honestly, how can you send printed text via a landline telephone? Obviously,  magic is involved. That's all you need to know.

So it's been a mostly-do-nothing day. I spent some time taking the first stitches on Kitten #8. This one introduces a new color to the mix with that terra cotta red.


We were a lazy bunch this morning. Sadie had a primo napping spot on Mike's lap.


Smitty enjoyed his purrsonal quilt on the bed.


I had a couple of Braeburn apples left over from when I made the apple crisp last week. It seemed like a good time to try this Apple Cobbler for Two recipe. It was super easy to make. It's supposed to be baked in ramekins.


I decided to use these two soup mugs I purchased just for this sort of thing. They're the same diameter as a ramekin, but deeper. This leaves room for a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 


We made another short grocery shopping trip to pick up the things we forgot on yesterday's short grocery shopping trip. 

Back home, we had some lunch and lazed around for most of the day. Just a little while ago, I decided to draw another photo prompt card:


For this prompt, I pretty much stuck to things inside the RV. This first one is a weighted napkin holder. I can't count the number of times we'd enter the RV after a day on the road and find our stack of napkins scattered all over the floor. We finally got smart and purchased this one that has a weight to hold things in place. The problem has not returned.


This is the tube for the pump on our bottle of hand soap.


Charging cord for iPads.


Kosher salt.


Laces on my shoe.


My laptop keyboard.


My cordless mouse.


I stepped outside for this one. It's the Bird of Paradise growing outside our door. They are such interesting flowers.


Of course, I wanted some extreme close-ups of the kitties. Here's Smitty's green eye.


And his pink nose.


I couldn't resist another shot of his nose.


This is the tip of his tail.


Sadie was less cooperative with extreme close-ups of her face. She did purrmit me to capture her hind paw.


This is their scratching post.


And this is their dry food. Looks delicious, no? Who wouldn't want to eat that? (Raises hand.)


Okay, and I wanted to update you on the recipe I tested for America's Test Kitchens recently. You might recall we ate it after the bare minimum amount of time in the refrigerator. Even after three days, it didn't set up any more than it did the first night we ate it. Think of a cream pie without a crust, and you're going to be pretty close to its taste and texture. I'll be curious to see if they make changes to the recipe (assuming they publish it), but I wouldn't make it again.

That's all I have for you today. We're going to go get some more avocados tomorrow, and we have dinner with friends planned for later in the evening. I'm contributing dessert, and so I'll be doing some baking in the morning too. Aside from that, we're just biding our time until we move on to Arizona on Thursday. We have a couple of outings planned for next week, but then we'll hit the road again. There's still so much to see along our route. We're just barely getting started.

3/16/24

Life with Metal

Good afternoon, my friends. It was a "life" day today. Mike has been outside most of the day. First, he washed the windows. Then he went around, wiping off the whole RV with a rag and a bucket. The man is very picky about his toys. 

I've done three loads of laundry today and I made a macaroni salad for tonight's dinner. We're having BLATs. Those are BLT's with some avocado added. If you've been keeping count, you should know that I'm gaining on my goal to use avocados 1,001 different ways. We had them on our hamburgers last night. We've had them in the grapefruit salad I showed you in a previous post. We've had them halved and pitted with a little salad dressing poured in the hole. We've had avocado toast. We've had them in salads. And I made Avocado-Egg Salad with them. I'm sure I could list more, but I'll stop there. They're easier to use than zucchini.

I spent a little extra time on my slow-stitching this morning. When I stopped, I'd filled everything in my hoop.


And that was the last of it. When I took it out of the hoop, it looked like this. It still needed to have the Sticky Fabri-Solvy washed out of it.


That was my first load of wash. My little washer adds only enough water for the size of the load, and so I needed to add in some other stuff to get enough water volume to do the job. It seemed like a good time to wash the rest of the clothes.

While that was washing, I readied Block #8 of the Kittens blocks. I'll start this when I sit down to stitch again.


When the first block for Grandpa's Bridges was washed, dried, and ironed, it looked like this:


The Valdani perle cotton I'm using is a variegated thread. It spans from very dark olive green to black, although to my eyes it looks mostly brown and black. And this was my goal for March's 


so I'll link up there when the party starts at the end of the month.

Smitty got out for a good walk this morning.


He snooped around until he found some good grass to eat. This is his purrsonal pasture now. 


Back inside, he got treats of valor. Sadie got treats of appeasement.


From there, we made a short grocery shopping trip. When we're at the grocery store, we're constantly asking ourselves if we have room in the refrigerator for this thing or that thing. Then, we come home and play refrigerator Tetris. Today's wasn't too difficult. 

We both took naps, and then it seemed like a good time for another photo prompt. This is the one I selected. 


Of course, there's plenty of metal in an RV park. I was looking for things that weren't trailers or cars. The first thing to pop into my head was my magnetic needle nanny and two needles. The one in the front is the one I'm using on the Kittens block with regular embroidery floss. The one behind has a larger eye. I use that one for Grandpa's Bridges, which is stitched in the heavier Valdani perle cotton.


As I headed out the door, I noticed the keys and hooks.


Outside, the wheel on our truck.


From there, I took a walk through the park. This sign is metal. Don't worry...we're only going one way, so we're good.


Here's a metal lamp post.


Each space in the RV park has one of these. This is where we hook up to electricity.


Walking on...this metal fence.


Just to the right, this motorcycle was parked. Gotta be plenty of metal there, right?


Here's a sprinkler head. It might be plastic. I didn't stop to examine it.


These metal rings holding the trash barrel together. I figure anyone watching me probably wonders what I'm doing when I'm seen taking pictures of trash barrels.


Here's someone's propane tank. In this park, if we run out of propane, we set our empty tank at the curb. Someone from the park picks it up, refills it, and delivers it back to us. It's a nice perk, and not uncommon in RV parks.


A few of the spaces are having their concrete replaced. Here, you can see the metal rebar where the concrete will be poured eventually.


They used this little tractor to smooth out the space. It's metal, for sure. Also, it has the word "Cat," and so, by definition, it must be included.


Yes, please. 


If you have an emergency, you can use this emergency telephone. The outer case is metal.


If you have a true emergency, you might want to use this metal fire extinguisher.


But if you need more extinguishing power, there's always whatever this is. 


If you yourself are on fire, just jump in the pool here, and then use the metal ladder to get back out once all the sparks have been extinguished. Be sure to check your hair.


Here's the gate latch. No code necessary.


Some very small people were apparently visiting the office. Their wagon was plastic, but their bikes were metal.


Here we have a metal lock and chain assembly.


Here's where we hook up for water.


When I reached the gate for the park, I took a walk around there. This is a spring on one of the playground pieces.


This is a support bar for the back of one of the park benches.


These metal screws can be found on another bench. 


The park is fenced with a chain link fence and metal poles.


Here's the metal hinge for the gate.


Here's the metal spring that closes it.


Back at our RV, I got the metal spokes and other parts for Mike's front bike tire.


This is the metal zipper on my hoodie.


Here's another spice bottle with a metal lid.


This is the metal hose attached to our shower head.


This is my metal apple corer/slicer. When I took this picture off the camera, I noticed it was broken down there in the lower right corner. Well. That will never do. I went straight to work ordering another one off Amazon. It will be delivered tomorrow. I know I'm supposed to be mad at Amazon, but I can't help myself. I 💗Amazon. They'll bring it right to the door.


Finally, the metal grate and burner on our stove top.


But no walk is complete unless I take pictures of every blooming thing. Here's the hibiscus again, although this is a different one.


And the bougainvillea. I love it.


Here's another color of bougainvillea.


These are blooming on a low shrub.

And that brings me to the end. I hope you've enjoyed this meander through metal. 

We have another free day tomorrow. I expect we'll do something, but we have no plans just yet. We're here until Thursday, when we'll be on our way again. First stop will be in Arizona. We're hoping to drive through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to see the blooming wildflowers. Looking at the map last night, we weren't sure how to pull it off without taking some winding mountain roads. It seems our friend, Tom, knows a way, and so we'll consult with him when we see him again on Monday.

From here, I'm thinking I'll take the first stitches on the newest Kittens block. There's no time like the present to start something new.