Red Sun

We've been under an "air quality alert" for the past several days, and it continues this morning. While I was sitting reading email, I noticed the sun rising through the trees...a deep red orb.

Ordinarily, we can see the mountains from our place, and even on a hazy day, we can see down into the Tualatin Valley. Here's an image from a previous year.

Today, this is what we see. I'd like to say it's a foggy day, but that is smoke, my friends. Choking smoke. (Edited to say that just after posting this, I saw an article in our local newspaper that stated our air in Portland is right now among the most polluted in the world!)

So, as long as I was outside, I took a picture of the poor eaten off tomato. It's grown to immense proportions now, and it's loaded with cherry tomatoes. This is the Sun Sweet variety. They're orange and very sweet when they're ripe. You can see one of the ripe ones in the lower right-hand corner of the image below.

They disappear off the vine as quickly as they appear. I'd blame the squirrels (and I do), but mainly, it's the gardener picking them and eating them as fast as they ripen.

The kitties were mystified at my joining them for this short little stroll.

Smitty likes to gaze out at his empire.

Sadie is always on the move. It's hard to get an in-focus picture of her, even in outdoor lighting with a fast shutter speed. She's a little feline dynamo.

Generally, I have to catch her when she comes in for the day, tired, and ready for napping.

She moves a lot slower then.

Smitty needs to do a little work on his dirty feet. He's obviously been digging for gophers.

Backing up to yesterday morning, I stitched enough to move my hoop to the last position.

This is all that remains. Possibly, I'll finish it this morning. When the remaining stitching gets this close, I often spend more time working on it until it's all done.

Most of yesterday was spent in the kitchen. I made us a cold dinner of two salads. Mike requested this Seafood Pasta Salad with Lemon-Saffron Herb Dressing. It's a family favorite. Some of the ingredients are a little spendy. I happen to have a supply of saffron gifted to me by a family member after they traveled to [someplace] where saffron is cheap. I keep my supply under lock and key. (Not really.) You could leave it out, and I doubt the salad would suffer one iota for it. Also, crab can be expensive. I've always used canned crab, and no one complains.

Also, this Fire and Ice Salad. It was a good way to use some of our CSA veggies. My version here has a yellow bell pepper, two large tomatoes cut into wedges, a cucumber (peeled and seeds removed to approximate an English cucumber), and sweet onion.

Here's what's in the dressing:

For the amount of vegetables I used, half the dressing recipe will suffice. You can use any combination of vegetables that sounds good to you. Just toss it with the dressing and give it several hours in the fridge to marry the flavors, and you've got yourself a yummy salad.

Finally, a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Peach Pie for Two. I've linked to the recipe I adapted from Southern Living. To make a pie for two, you need this little pie plate from Anchor Hocking, and then cut the recipe to a little less than half.

Peaches are so nice right now, and I picked some up at a local produce stand the other day. I had to because when I reorganized the pantry shelves the other day, I came across three jars of this from last summer. Hmmmm...what have we here?

Oh yes...I almost forgot about you!

Well, somebody's gotta eat it, right? So, I looked around for "somebody" and saw only Mike and me and the kitties. And the kitties said, "Ptooey, peaches! Gack! Put some birds in there!" So, that just left Mike and me. So after our (ahem) low-calorie dinner of two salads (pay no attention to that mayonnaise behind the curtain) we sliced that baby in half, added some vanilla ice cream and then doused it in Peach & Brandy Sauce. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

We're always glad it's a pie for two. Otherwise, we'd have another piece right after finishing the first one. The peach and brandy sauce is good just on ice cream...no pie required. But don't take my word for it. You can make your own. Peaches are good right now, and the recipe is right here. If you're not into canning, I don't see any reason it couldn't be frozen or stashed in the fridge.

So, let's see...the only other thing I did yesterday was to finish off the binding for the Summer Holiday quilt, and that makes a finished quilt. I absolutely love this quilt from Lynette Anderson. Her designs with the cat and the dog (hers) are adorable.

Here's how it looks from the back.

And I'm editing this post to say that quilting and binding this quilt was my August OMG, and so I'll be linking up at the finishing party.

So, I have a day with not much on the agenda. There are a couple of housekeeping chores to get after since I've done nothing for the past several days, but mainly, it's going to be NBS (nothing but sewing). I'm staying inside where the air is mostly safe to breathe. Today I want to get to work on the orange blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I've been working away cutting the black and white strips. There are probably enough cut now to get on with things.

What's on tap at your place today?