Handy

It's been all hand-stitching here at the Three Cats Ranch for the last couple of days. The morning sunrise was beautiful yesterday,

and I was lucky enough to have my newest lap cat joining me while I continued on stitching Block #10 for the Bee-utiful Quilt-A-Long.

Miss Sadie is having to be socialized to be a lap cat, but she's making progress. She doesn't seem to realize that she's welcome to jump up at almost any time. Usually, I have to lift her up.

Once she's there, she has to be discouraged from scratching and biting. She's not trying to be aggressive when she does that. She's just a very playful little kitten who doesn't understand that human skin doesn't hold up well to teeth and claws. She's learning. Also, you'll be happy to know that Litter Box Cleaner Man has announced that her runny poo is starting to look more normal. She's never acted sick, but it's hard to think she could be feeling tip-top with parasites and diarrhea going on. We're getting her fixed up, slowly but surely.

While she and I were chatting, I spent some time stitching. The bunny was finished the day before, but yesterday I added the floral wreath on the right side there.

The beautiful sunrise from yesterday heralded a cloud cover moving into our area and we actually had a few showers this morning. Sue and I managed to get in our walk without getting rained on, although it was muggy and heavy with humidity. Would it surprise you to know that I took pictures of every blooming thing? These wildflowers for example:

Look at how pretty these snowberries are, laden with dew.

When I got home from walking, I stitched the left side of Block #10.

The last of it fits in my hoop now, and I'll finish that tomorrow morning.

Also, I've turned two corners on Seating for Two. I'm about 25% of the way around the binding, but 50% of the corners are finished!

Tomorrow morning I'm heading off to the Portland Farmer's Market with Erik and Mae. Erik has been working on Saturdays, and so we haven't been to the farmer's market yet this year. He's on vacation this week, and so we all jumped at the chance to go together. I'll be on the hunt for pie cherries this time around. I don't really need much in the way of vegetables, what with the overabundance from the CSA share.

I've tried a couple of new recipes this week. This one was super easy. This is a Roasted Shrimp and Broccoli with Peanut Sauce. If you click on that link, you'll see that this was broiled in the original recipe. I'm not a fan of broiling and so I roasted mine in a 475° oven. I started with 10 minutes for the broccoli, then added the shrimp and roasted it for another 10 minutes, and voila! A one pan meal. I served it with a cucumber salad, but it would have been fine just like this.

Our CSA shares tend to be heavy with bitter lettuce. Our farmers seem to prefer it, and it's been hard for us to make it palatable unless we mix it with sweet lettuce and a lot of dressing. Then I got wind of this recipe for Toro Bravo's Radicchio Salad with Manchego Vinaigrette.

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The lettuce is given a 15-minute soak in an ice water bath, and that cut the bitterness significantly. Then the vinaigrette was made from two kinds of vinegar infused with red onion. The recipe had me strain the vinegar from the onions, which I did, but then I added the onions back into the salad with the manchego, and this was delicious. I still have another head of radicchio and some leftover manchego, and I'll be making this again soon.

I served that along with this Pasta with Collard Greens and Onion.

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As I've said before, I actually love the collard greens, but Mike has been a little slow to warm up to them. Even he liked this dish enough to want seconds. How bad can it be, right? The collards are first blanched for two minutes, and then the same water is used to cook the pasta. While the pasta boils, the collards and onions are fried and steamed in a frying pan, which means the collards are well cooked down by the time you add the pasta and serve it up. We liked both of these dishes, and I'll be making them again.

So that's the latest on the war with the vegetables, but the battle will continue this weekend. I have a lot of canning in store for myself. I'll be making zucchini relish, calico pickle relish (that uses cucumbers), and some pickled beets. Assuming I find some pie cherries, I'll be baking a cherry pie too. As you can see, it's going to be a kitchen weekend, and I'm looking forward to it.

What's on tap for your weekend?